Weight Loss Drug Shortages Drive Telehealth Company To Offer Tracker
The popularity of diabetes drugs like Ozempic and Mounjaro has led to shortages. Patients with prescriptions can now use Ro's new online tool to find supplies. Other news on the medications reports on the cost to the U.S. health care system and on users' firsthand experiences.
Axios:
New Tracker Aims To Help Patients Find Weight-Loss Drugs Amid Shortages
Patients struggling to find doses of blockbuster anti-obesity and diabetes drugs will have new help from a drug supply tracker built by telehealth company Ro. Explosive demand for drugs from Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly have led to shortages, making it difficult for patients with prescriptions to find the treatments when they need them. (Reed, 5/29)
Los Angeles Times:
Will Ozempic Bankrupt The U.S. Healthcare System?
An April 24 letter from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders to the CEO of Novo Nordisk began with heartfelt thanks to the Danish drugmaker for inventing Ozempic and Wegovy, two medications poised to improve the health of tens of millions of Americans with obesity and related diseases. But the senator’s grateful tone faded rapidly. (Kaplan, 5/29)
The Wall Street Journal:
Our Readers Tried Weight-Loss Drugs Like Mounjaro. Here’s What They Told Us.
Hundreds of readers responded in the comments space and by email to Bradley Olson’s essay about his experience using a GLP-1 drug for weight loss. Readers shared stories about their own attempts to lose weight, journeys that often took place over the course of decades and included nonmedicinal strategies before the advent of GLP-1 drugs. Our readers made overwhelmingly positive comments about the medications, and in general found that the transformational impact of the GLP-1 drugs made such difficulties as getting prescriptions filled and side effects bearable. Some readers who have struggled to lose weight wrote that they found inspiration in Olson’s essay to consider trying a medical solution. (Reynolds, 5/29)
In other pharmaceutical news —
Stat:
Lab Trade Group Sues FDA To Halt Regulation Of Lab-Developed Tests
A group representing clinical labs across the country sued the Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday over the agency’s plan to actively regulate lab-developed tests. (Lawrence, 5/29)
The New York Times:
Stanley Goldstein, Who Helped Make CVS A Pharmacy Giant, Dies At 89
Stanley P. Goldstein, who in the early 1960s helped start a retail chain named Consumer Value Stores, which, after shortening its name to CVS — because, he said, fewer letters meant cheaper signs — grew into the largest drugstore chain in the United States, died on Tuesday at his home in Providence, R.I. He was 89.The company, which is headquartered in Rhode Island, announced his death. Family members told The Providence Journal that the cause was cancer, diagnosed about a month ago. (Gabriel, 5/27)
In science and tech news —
Stat:
Akili, Maker Of Video Game For ADHD, To Be Acquired For 34 Million
A month after announcing it was seeking strategic alternatives, Akili Interactive, maker of a video game designed to treat ADHD, said it will go private in a merger with Virtual Therapeutics. The deal is expected to net Akili’s shareholders $34 million. (Aguilar, 5/29)
Stat:
Scientists Successfully Use Ultrasound Imaging To Map Brain Activity
Researchers may have a new way to watch the brain pulse, thanks to an ultrasound probe and a tiny window in the skull. (Broderick, 5/29)
The New York Times:
The Textbooks Were Wrong About How Your Tongue Works
Think for a minute about the little bumps on your tongue. You probably saw a diagram of those taste bud arrangements once in a biology textbook — sweet sensors at the tip, salty on either side, sour behind them, bitter in the back. But the idea that specific tastes are confined to certain areas of the tongue is a myth that “persists in the collective consciousness despite decades of research debunking it,” according to a review published this month in The New England Journal of Medicine. Also wrong: the notion that taste is limited to the mouth. (Silberner, 5/29)
