The logo of pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk is displayed in front of its offices in Bagsvaerd, Copenhagen, Denmark, February 4, 2026.
Tom Petit | Reuters
The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved a higher-dose version of Novo NordiskWegovy, ‘s blockbuster weight loss injection, as the company strives to regain market share from its main rival Elie Lilly.
Novo plans to launch Wegovy’s higher 7.2-milligram dose in April. The Danish drugmaker is positioning this version to better compete with Lilly’s obesity drug Zepbound, which has been shown to be more effective in promoting weight loss than Wegovy’s standard 2.4-milligram dose.
This superior efficacy allowed Zepbound to become the preferred anti-obesity drug for prescribers and patients, even though it entered the U.S. market later than Wegovy, and solidified Lilly’s position as the dominant player in this space.
High-dose Wegovy helped obese patients lose an average of 20.7% of their weight after 72 weeks in a phase three trial. The standard dose of Wegovy showed about 15% weight loss on average in clinical trials.
“I think it really makes it more competitive, and it really reduces the delta,” Dr. Jason Brett, Novo Nordisk’s top U.S. medical officer, said in an interview before approval on Thursday.
“But more importantly, I think it just gives patients another option if they’re not meeting their goals, and they’re not getting some of these higher weight losses for some patients,” he added.
In a separate phase three trial in patients with obesity and type 2 diabetes, high-dose Wegovy demonstrated an average weight loss of 14.1%. People with diabetes generally have a harder time losing weight than people without diabetes.
This is the first approval of a GLP-1 treatment under the FDA’s new National Priority Voucher plan, which aims to reduce drug review times to one to two months for companies that the agency believes support U.S. national health priorities. The FDA launched the pilot plan in June.