The PharmaDoctor weight management pharmacy service has revealed that in the last six months, the popularity of Mounjaro has far surpassed Wegovy.
Almost 80% of products dispensed via this service were Mounjaro, PharmaDoctor chief executive officer Graham Thoms told C + D last week (December 13).
Read more: Mounjaro: NICE sets out £317m annual NHS weight loss jab rollout
He said of the 996 pharmacies in the PharmaDoctor network offering weight loss jabs, less than 21% of products dispensed were Wegovy.
And in the last month alone, over 85% of the products dispensed were Mounjaro – less than 15% were Wegovy, he added.
Read more: NHSE proposes offering Mounjaro to nearly 250,000 people over three years
Other popular prescriptions from the PharmaDoctor weight management service included Saxenda, Xenical and Mysimba, Thoms said.
And while unable to share the total number of weight loss jabs supplied by the service in the past six months, Thoms told C + D that it was “in the tens of thousands”.
“Superior weight loss”
“Our forecast – based on the growth of the last year – is that our partner pharmacies will see [more than] 500,000 patients over the next 12 months,” Thoms said.
“This will generate [more than] £129 million [in] business over the next year,” he added.
Read more: Weight loss: Superdrug expands online Mounjaro service to high street
It comes as the manufacturer of Mounjaro Eli Lilly released trial results in the US earlier this month (December 4) showing that Zepbound – the name of the drug in the US containing the same active ingredient (tirzepatide) as Mounjaro – was “superior” to Wegovy.
“Zepbound provided a 47% greater relative weight loss compared to Wegovy” in over 750 patients between April 2023 and November 2024, it said.
“Participants using Zepbound lost 22.8 kg and participants on Wegovy lost 15 kg,” the trial found.
Read more: Pharmacies pioneer private Wegovy service as drug sees UK launch
“On average, Zepbound led to a superior weight loss of 20.2% compared to 13.7% with Wegovy,” it revealed.
The trial also found that “31.6% of people taking Zepbound achieved at least 25% body weight loss compared to 16.1% of those taking Wegovy”.
“A class of its own”
Senior vice president of global affairs at Lilly Cardiometabolic Health said that the study was conducted due to the “increased interest around obesity medications… to help health care providers and patients make informed decisions about the treatment”.
“Zepbound is in a class of its own as the only FD-approved dual GIP and GLP-1 receptor agonist obesity medication,” he said.
“And it’s changing how millions of people manage this chronic disease,” he added.
Read more: Mum landed in hospital after taking Facebook ad Mounjaro
Meanwhile, a mum of three “spent the night” in hospital last month after taking Mounjaro purchased from online pharmacy Curate Health after seeing a Facebook ad from the company.
And an Ipsos survey last month revealed a third of the British public believes the NHS should “not be offering weight loss injections to people who are obese, even if this means that people stay obese”.
