Earlier this year, my colleague Yasmin Tayag wrote that Ozempic—the diabetes drug that has become a cultural phenomenon in its off-label use for weight-loss—was about to be old news. She was right.
Over the past few days, presentations at the American Diabetes Association meeting in San Diego have delivered a slew of findings that suggest the Age of Ozempic is already over. Taking its place: a parade of better treatments for obesity. A new, oral form of semaglutide works about as well as Ozempic or Wegovy, which are injectable versions of the same; so does another pill containing a drug called orforglipron. New data also hint that shots containing tirzepatide or survodutide may end up working better than semaglutide, and that a compound called retatrutide is perhaps the best of all, with effects approaching those of bariatric surgery. I won’t even bore you with the news about pemvidutide, lotiglipron, and danuglipron!
In other words, Ozempic is old news, and sooner than we thought. The drug will still be widely-used, but a bewildering array of medications for obesity is advancing through development, and in the coming years, they will become a bewildering array of options for patients: Some drugs may be cheaper or more convenient than the others; some may be stronger; some may eventually have fewer nasty side effects or more consistent benefits across the population. That only makes it more disturbing that, even as the drug Ozempic is becoming obsolete, the name Ozempic, as the shorthand for a class of drugs, seems destined to live on.
For months now, the word has been used as a generic term, along the lines of Band-Aid, escalator, and thermos: a specific brand that gets reshaped through common use into a type. Consider all the headlines about the new “Ozempic pills,” the coming of “Ozempic-like drugs,” or the spreading hype for “Nature’s Ozempic.” See reporting on the…
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