2024-03-02 18:06:19
By Marie Bartnik
Published yesterday at 2:00 p.m., Updated yesterday at 7:06 p.m.
“These drugs are a revolution in the treatment of obesity,” explains Professor Emmanuel Disse, head of the endocrinology, diabetes and nutrition department at the Hospices Civils de Lyon. Editing Charlotte Paroielle / Le Figaro
INVESTIGATION – A new generation of treatments is revolutionizing patient care, with cascading effects expected on the pharmacy industry, but also the food industry, catering and public finances.
«I lost 30 kilos in a year and a half, to stabilize at 95 kilos. At 1 meter 66, I am still considered obese, but my life has changed», smiles Marie-Hélène Crépillon. The overweight of this 50-year-old dental assistant prevented her from bending down to clean her workstation and made it difficult for her to walk. These difficulties are now behind her. For two years, on the prescription of her endocrinologist, the Nîmes resident has injected herself every week with a dose of Wegovy, the star drug from the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk. Her bulimic cravings have diminished, eating too much fat makes her sick and “the feeling of satiety comes more quickly, says the fifty-year-old. Instead of eating a bag of chips in an hour, I can keep it down for a week.»
Marie-Hélène Crépillon is not the only one whose life has been changed by Wegovy. Former English Prime Minister Boris Johnson certainly stopped taking it because he could not stand the side effects, mainly digestive problems. But Elon Musk has touted it for weight loss, as has Oprah Winfrey. “The fact that there is a medically approved prescription to manage my weight and stay healthier, in my life, feels like a relief, a redemption, a gift”declared in December to the magazine People the former American television star, whose figure discrepancies have been a topic of conversation throughout his career. Last Thursday, the announcement of her upcoming departure from the board of directors of WeightWatchers, of which she has been a member for almost ten years, and that of the donation of her shares to the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington , had the effect of a cold shower on Wall Street: the stock price of the group specializing in diets plunged by 18%…
The recent development of a new generation of drugs against obesity has triggered cascading upheavals, and not only for the first patients and for the pharmaceutical laboratories which developed these molecules. If it has not yet had a massive impact on health and public accounts in Western countries, the phenomenon is becoming societal in the United States, where Wegovy has been available since 2021. Its side effects are felt in a number of industries: pharmacy, of course, but also distribution, the food industry and even catering…
In the United States, it is a real societal phenomenon, which is no longer limited to the American West Coast.
Thomas Crosier, partner at Kearney
In the United States, examples abound of obese or overweight people who have become fans of Wegovy or its rival Zepbound…
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#antiobesity #drugs #disrupting #health #economy