'Wegovy' weight loss drug could improve heart failure symptoms

The weight loss medication semaglutide – better known as Wegovy – can benefit people living with heart failure and obesity, according to research presented today at the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Congress in Amsterdam and published in the New England Journal of Medicine. 

The study, funded by pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, showed that an injection of 2.4mg of semaglutide once a week improved heart failure-related symptoms and physical function and results in greater weight loss compared with placebo in people with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction. 

Heart failure is a condition where your heart can’t pump blood around your body as well as it should. In some cases, the heart is still able to pump but the ventricles are stiff and can’t relax properly.

This means the heart doesn’t fill up with as much blood as it should and less blood is pumped to the rest of the body.

This is called heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF). It’s estimated that as many as 500k people in the UK have this type of heart failure. 

Multiple benefits

The trial involved 529 with HFpEF and obesity, who were randomly assigned to receive either a semaglutide injection or placebo once a week for a year. 

After one year, the researchers found that those who had the semaglutide injection reported improved heart failure symptoms compared to the placebo group.

They had also lost an average of 13.3 per cent of their body weight, while those who received the placebo lost 2.6 per cent on average. 

Those in the semaglutide group also improved the distance they were able to walk in six minutes by an average of 21.5 metres over the year, compared to a 1.2 metre improvement for placebo. 

What we say

Dr Sonya Babu-Narayan, our Associate Medical Director, said: “Only a few years ago, drugs that could help people to achieve life-changing weight loss felt like a far-off dream. But now they are here.

"This study demonstrates that semaglutide is not only safe for people with this type of heart failure but it also has important benefits for their quality of life. 

“For some people, living with heart failure can make everyday activities difficult or even impossible. The kind of improvements seen in this study, such as being able to walk further, could have a transformational impact on someone’s life. 

“Obesity is on the rise in the UK and beyond, but most of us won’t need medication to help us lose weight.

"What we do need is to live in a society that makes the healthy option the easy option. That means an environment that can support everyone to maintain a healthy weight, for example by ensuring regular physical activity and eating well are accessible and cost effective.  

“Meanwhile, it’s important that people with diabetes who rely on semaglutide to control their blood sugar are not put at risk if supply of the drug for new uses beyond diabetes control outstrips demand.” 

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