Wegovy vs Ozempic for weight loss: What is the difference?

Wegovy vs Ozempic for weight loss

Ozempic, Ryblesus and Wegovy are all brand names for a compound called semaglutide. It is prescribed in various doses and can be in the form of a weekly injection – administered in the stomach, thigh or arm – or a daily oral tablet.

Wegovy is a higher dosing of an anti-obesity drug called semaglutide aimed at people with type 2 diabetes. It was developed a decade ago and has been available in a lower-dose form called Ozempic, designed for diabetics only, for the past five years.

Enthusiasm for it in the UK as a weight management tool has risen after a University College London study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, found a found a third of people who took it for obesity lost more than one-fifth of their total body weight.

But how exactly does the medication that’s being hailed as a ‘gamechanger’ work?

A little science lesson. Meet gut hormone GLP-1. ‘When most people eat their levels go up, causing them to feel satisfied,’ says Dr Harvinder Chahal, consultant endocrinologist and lead bariatric physician at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust.

‘But patients with type 2 diabetes lack this.’ That’s why semaglutide, which works as a receptor in the intestine, was created in 2012 to help the pancreas release the right amount of insulin.

Doctors soon noticed that as well as improving blood sugar levels, patients – who were feeling fuller, sooner – also reported weight loss. Indeed, research has shown that obese people also lack satiety-signalling GLP-1 – and so semaglutide was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for weight management in 2021, with NICE (the UK’s equivalent) following suit this year.

It’s effectiveness is clear: Dr Chahal points to research that has found a weekly 2.4mg dose of semaglutide can trigger up to a 15 per cent reduction in body weight in the space of six to nine months. Wegovy vs Ozempic for weight loss