Unfortunately, I assume this is behind a paywall:
The drug is already approved for diabetes.
Here is one paragraph:
Nearly 2,000 participants, at 129 centers in 16 countries, injected themselves weekly with semaglutide or a placebo for 68 weeks. Those who got the drug lost close to 15 percent of their body weight, on average, compared with 2.4 percent among those receiving the placebo.
Unfortunately, it is likely to be too expensive for most people:
Generally, insurers have refused to pay for the weight-loss drugs on the market. Semaglutide is likely to be expensive. The lower dose used to treat diabetes carries an average retail price of nearly $1,000 a month. (Insurers usually pay for diabetes drugs, Dr. Kushner noted.)
Typically, folks who seriously change their diet and exercise in order to lose weight, can lose around 10% of their body weight before they plateau, and either have to ratchet up the program severely to keep losing, or work on maintenance of what they have lost, or put it all back on again. I don’t see an additional 5% as game changing. In a 300-pound person, that’s the difference between losing 30 pounds and 45 pounds. Good and useful, but only incremental, and not viable at those prices. Also I have to wonder what happens when you stop taking the drug – weight loss is pointless if you can’t keep it off over time.
Qiana Mosely lost 40 pounds while participating in a clinical trial of the drug semaglutide. “It had to be the meds,” she said. When the trial ended, her weight started to creep up.
Well, that sounds like a great deal for pharma companies that have exhausted the market for expanding revenues from long-term usage of antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs. It would appear, however, to do little for people with poor health habits, lack of resources, and living in “food deserts” with little access to non-processed fresh ingredients causing them to make bad nutritional and lifestyle choices.
Stranger