
Weight-loss drug Wegovy (semaglutide) and its diabetes-focused cousin, Ozempic, have already upended the treatment of both obesity and diabetes, with sales of both drugs skyrocketing. Now, injected Wegovy could prove a boon for many patients battling heart failure, a new study suggests. The trial results were presented Friday in Amsterdam at the annual meeting of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC). Treatment with the drug “produced large improvements in symptoms, physical limitations and exercise function” compare to placebo, explained study lead author Dr. Mikhail Kosiborod, of Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City. In the trial, obese heart failure patients who took Wegovy for a year also showed “greater weight loss and fewer serious adverse events as compared with placebo,” Kosiborod added in an ESC news release. The findings were published simultaneously in the New England Journal of Medicine. The new trial focused on a subset of patients with what’s known as “heart failure with preserved ejection fraction,” comprising about half of all people with heart failure. Ejection fraction measures the heart’s ability to pump oxygen-rich blood out to the body. Having a low ejection fraction means pumping ability is dangerously impaired. But heart failure patients can have a preserved ejection fraction, meaning they retain pumping ability that’s in a healthy range. Heart failure is still an often lethal ailment, however, with patients… read on > read on >