New diabetes pill beats semaglutide in head-to-head study
Eli Lilly's new pill, orforglipron, just beat out oral semaglutide in a big diabetes study with nearly 1,700 adults across five countries and Puerto Rico.
People took either drug for a year to see which worked better for type 2 diabetes.
Orforglipron helped people lose more weight
Orforglipron (36mg) lowered average blood sugar (HbA1c) by 2.2%, compared to semaglutide's 1.4%.
It also helped people lose more weight—about 9% of their body weight (nearly 9.07kg), while semaglutide users lost around 5% (4.99kg).
Orforglipron also produced improvements in cardiovascular risk factors, including systolic blood pressure, triglycerides and cholesterol subtypes, with slightly greater reductions than semaglutide.
More people on orforglipron had stomach side effects
More people on orforglipron had stomach side effects—almost 60%, versus up to 45% on semaglutide—which led to higher dropout rates.
Still, as lead researcher Dr Julio Rosenstock put it, "Orforglipron outperformed oral semaglutide 7 mg and 14 mg diabetes-related doses on every key endpoint we measured, including A1C and weight loss, with improvements appearing as early as four weeks and sustained throughout the study."