Eli Lilly weight-loss drug found to address sleep apnoea in trial

Eli Lilly’s weight-loss drug tirzepatide significantly reduced sleep apnoea problems in a late-stage clinical trial, the pharmaceutical group said on Wednesday, adding to evidence that could encourage more insurers to cover the drug.

The results from two year-long clinical studies showed that tirzepatide, which is marketed under brands including Zepbound for weight loss and Mounjaro for diabetes, helped to cut the severity of obstructive sleep apnoea in adults with obesity by up to nearly two-thirds, suggesting the treatment could help the estimated 20mn Americans affected by moderate to severe sleep apnoea.

The positive data will also be a boon to Eli Lilly’s efforts to push for more widescale coverage of the drugs by private insurers and US federal health insurance programme Medicare, which were both initially reluctant to cover the treatment.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said last month that Medicare Part D drug benefit plans will cover weight loss medicines when they are approved to treat a separate medical problem, such as heart disease. Tirzepatide’s list price is $1,060 for four weeks of supply.

Jeff Emmick, Eli Lilly’s senior vice-president of product development, said that while as many as 80mn US adults may suffer from obstructive sleep apnoea, about a quarter of whom face more serious symptoms, 85 per cent of cases go undiagnosed and untreated.

“Addressing this unmet need head-on is critical, and while there are pharmaceutical treatments for the excessive sleepiness associated with [obstructive sleep apnoea], tirzepatide has the potential to be the first pharmaceutical treatment for the underlying disease,” said Emmick.

Eli Lilly said that it plans to submit the results to the US Food and Drug Administration and other medicine regulators worldwide to seek approval for tirzepatide as a sleep apnoea treatment beginning this summer, after presenting the findings in full at the American Diabetes Association annual meeting in June.

Shares in the Indiana-based drugmaker rose by 0.5 per cent on Wednesday.

Tirzepatide is part of a new class of weight-loss drugs, known as GLP-1s, which includes Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy and Ozempic drugs, that are projected to expand to a $100bn market by the end of the decade, according to analysts’ projections.

Not only are other pharma groups scrambling to buy up biotechs with promising obesity drugs, but Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk also are putting the drugs to work on other disease areas. Both groups are studying the drugs as treatments for different types of fatty liver diseases.

Last month, Wegovy received FDA approval to help reduce heart attack and stroke risk in patients with cardiovascular disease, enabling it to be covered by insurance for the more than 50mn Americans on Medicare Part D plans.

Until now, obstructive sleep apnoea has mainly been treated with continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machines, a breathing device that provides constant air pressure through the upper airways to keep them open. However, many patients report finding the treatment uncomfortable, with studies suggesting between a third and half of patients discontinue the treatment or never fill their prescription.

The first Eli Lilly study looking at tirzepatide to treat obstructive sleep apnoea showed that the drug reduced airway blockage events associated with the disorder by 27.4 an hour, compared with 4.8 events an hour for the placebo group, among patients using CPAP therapy.

In a separate study, looking at patients not using CPAP therapy, tirzepatide reduced sleep apnoea-related events by 30.4 events an hour, compared with a reduction of six events an hour for the placebo group. Neither study has yet been peer-reviewed.