Eli Lilly & Co said on Tuesday that all doses of its new diabetes drug Mounjaro are now available after social-media enthusiasm about the drug’s weight-loss benefits sparked a two-month-long shortage.
(Bloomberg) — Eli Lilly & Co said on Tuesday that all doses of its new diabetes drug Mounjaro are now available after social-media enthusiasm about the drug’s weight-loss benefits sparked a two-month-long shortage.
“Lilly is shipping all six doses of Mounjaro on an ongoing basis,” with no wholesale backorders, a spokeswoman said. But because the drug is still new and facing “dynamic demand, some pharmacies may experience an intermittent delay in receiving product from time to time.”
Mounjaro, also known as tirzepatide, was approved in the US last May to help people with type 2 diabetes control their blood sugar levels. It is part of a group of diabetes treatments known as GLP-1s that have shown outsize potential for weight loss.
Some of the drugs, including Mounjaro, are being recommended by doctors for that purpose even though they haven’t been explicitly approved as an obesity treatment in a common practice known as off-label prescribing.
Read more: Prescription weight-loss drugs are working, if you can get one
Mounjaro helped patients lose as much as 21% of their body weight, about 50 pounds, in a late-stage research trial last year, adding to public interest in the treatment. Lilly has said it will submit the drug to the US Food and Drug Administration as an obesity treatment once another late-stage study is finished, which is expected to occur by late April.
The FDA first listed a shortage of Mounjaro in mid-December. The agency says the drug is now available but hasn’t formally declared the shortage over. That determination can take some time, to ensure that a shortage has truly been resolved.
Another diabetes drug that has drawn wide interest, Novo Nordisk A/S’s Ozempic, is still in shortage at the 0.25 mg dose, though higher doses are available, according to the FDA’s drug shortages database. Lilly’s Trulicity, which was also listed as being in shortage in December, is available, though some higher doses may see pharmacy delays through April 2023, according to the FDA.
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