Novo Nordisk’s REACH Study: Ozempic Reduces Cardiovascular Risk By 23% vs. Dulaglutide

Novo Nordisk has released new findings from the real-world REACH study, showing that Ozempic® (semaglutide, once-weekly injection) significantly reduced the risk of major cardiovascular complications in people with type 2 diabetes compared to dulaglutide.

The study analyzed data from nearly 60,000 U.S. Medicare patients aged 66 years and older with type 2 diabetes, established atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD), and multiple comorbidities. Results demonstrated that Ozempic lowered the risk of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE), including heart attack and stroke, by 23% versus dulaglutide.

“As we age, the risk of experiencing a heart attack, stroke or dying from a cardiovascular event increases. At the same time, there are limited clinical data for people living with diabetes and cardiovascular disease aged 66 years or older. These data, showing a 23% risk reduction of a heart attack, stroke and death, fill an important gap and reinforce the well-established clinical evidence of semaglutide. This is great news for older patients as well as healthcare professionals, as these results build on the importance of our randomised clinical trial data assessing the effectiveness of treatments in a real-life setting. This also supports what we already know from our clinical development programmes that not all GLP-1 RAs are the same,” said Filip Krag Knop, senior vice president and incoming chief medical officer at Novo Nordisk. 

Further analysis revealed that semaglutide also reduced the combined risk of heart attack, stroke, hospitalization for unstable angina or heart failure, and death from any cause (five-point MACE) by 25%.

Ozempic is currently the only GLP-1 receptor agonist with proven cardiovascular and kidney event risk reduction in type 2 diabetes. These new results mark the first direct comparison of cardiovascular outcomes between semaglutide and dulaglutide in a U.S. Medicare population, reinforcing the evidence supporting Ozempic’s long-term benefits.