Independent source and costs: All that’s missing from otherwise solid Reuters story on Victoza

Our Review Summary

The story reports on findings from a clinical trial of Novo Nordisk’s diabetes drug Victoza published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The trial was designed to measure whether Victoza (generic name liraglutide), which is given by injection, was any less likely than standard diabetes care to lead to severe cardiovascular events like heart attacks or strokes in patients with type 2 diabetes. Along with reporting the key outcomes of the trial, the story quotes the lead scientist involved in the study saying that diabetes treatment can begin to move from managing blood sugar levels to managing the disease’s complications.

The importance of finding drugs to manage cardiovascular health in diabetes is made clear, and the story does a good job of contextualizing the significance of the results, comparing Victoza’s performance to rival diabetes drugs and highlighting that the results, although positive, were not as impressive as some pharmaceutical industry observers had hoped.

The story would have been stronger if it had mentioned the costs of Victoza, and included independent expert commentary, especially to contextualize the lead scientist’s claims that drugs like Victoza may herald a “shift” in how diabetes is managed.

Why This Matters

Diabetes is one of the most common chronic conditions in the world and its rate is increasing along with higher rates of obesity and an aging population. Treatment of diabetes seeks to modify the risk factors that increase diabetes-associated complications. Though much of the focus of treatment is in lowering blood sugars, decades of evidence suggest that tight sugar control doesn’t decrease important risks such as heart disease, stroke and kidney failure.

For this reason, treatments that not only control blood sugar but also have favorable effects on heart disease have been an area of focus. New classes of medicine such as the GLP-1’s, including Victoza that is studied here, have been evaluated to examine their effect on heart disease and heart disease related death. The favorable results of this study are encouraging and will lead to increased use of these medications.

Though not mentioned in this article, Victoza is given by daily injection under the skin, similar to insulin, and may decrease interest among people seeking the convenience of oral medications. The high cost of the drug and others like it will be another barrier to more widespread use, which argues for additional studies in lower risk groups in whom more established, less costly and easier to take medications are currently recommended.