LOS ANGELES — In the first head-to-head comparison of two blockbuster drugs used in real-world conditions, people who took Mounjaro lost significantly more weight than their counterparts who took Ozempic — and the longer the patients kept taking the drugs, the wider the gap became. After three months of weekly injections, patients on Ozempic lost 3.6% of their body weight, on average, while those on Mounjaro lost an average of 5.
9%. At the six-month mark, Ozempic patients had dropped an average of 5.8% of their weight, while the average weight loss for Mounjaro patients was 10.
1%. And when a full year had passed, those taking Ozempic had lost an average of 8.3% of their weight, while those taking Mounjaro had shed an average of 15.
3%. The researchers who conducted the analysis also found that compared with people on Ozempic, those on Mounjaro were 2.5 times more likely to lose at least 10% of their initial weight and more than three times as likely to lose at least 15% of their weight during their first year on the medications.
The findings were published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine. Dr. Matthew Freeby, an endocrinologist and director of the Gonda Diabetes Center at UCLA's Geffen School of Medicine, said the study results are in line with what he has observed in his own patients.
"From a weight-loss perspective, and from a sugar-lowering perspective for those with Type 2 diabetes, we see stronger effects with Mounjaro compared to Ozempic," said Freeby, who was not in.
