US patients take Wegovy obesity drug for around six months, Novo Nordisk says

LONDON (Reuters) -U.S. patients are on average staying on Novo Nordisk's Wegovy weight-loss medication for just six months, an executive said on Wednesday, attributing the short time to the low availability of the wildly popular drug.

Doug Langa, Novo's head of North America operations, was speaking on a call with analysts after the company trimmed its full-year profit outlook after reporting weaker-than-expected quarterly sales of Wegovy.

In March, at Novo's capital markets day, executives said that 32% of Wegovy patients in the U.S. were taking the medicine for more than a year.

Langa's comment on the much short period of time people are now staying on the wildly popular new weight-loss therapies comes amid a debate over their cost to patients, employers and government health plans.

Reuters reported last month that only one in four U.S. patients prescribed Wegovy or Ozempic for weight loss were still taking the popular medications two years later, according to an analysis of U.S. pharmacy claims.

Responding to a question about that data during an interview with Reuters after the earnings release on Wednesday, Chief Financial Officer Karsten Munk Knudsen said: "Yes, there are some patients who are on and off, but there are also a lot of patients that stay on therapy for a long period of time."

He said that the company was encouraged with the stay time in market data from the U.S. and other countries including Denmark.

The Danish drugmaker has launched Wegovy in 12 markets, with the U.S. being the most lucrative by far.

(Reporting by Maggie Fick; editing by Jason Neely and Josie Kao)