Novo Nordisk announced new findings from the REACH real-world study demonstrating that Ozempic (once-weekly injectable semaglutide) reduced the risk of major adverse cardiovascular events—such as heart attack, stroke, and death—by 23% compared to dulaglutide. The study analyzed data from nearly 60,000 U.S. Medicare patients aged 66 and older living with type 2 diabetes and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD), a condition that increases the risk of cardiovascular complications.
Presented at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) 2025 Annual Meeting in Vienna, the results provide crucial insights into treatment benefits for older patients, a group often underrepresented in clinical trials.
Filip Krag Knop, Senior Vice President and incoming Chief Medical Officer at Novo Nordisk, emphasized the importance of the findings, stating, “These data fill an important gap and reinforce the well-established clinical evidence of semaglutide… This supports what we already know from our clinical development programmes that not all GLP-1 RAs are the same.”
In addition to the 23% reduction in major cardiovascular events, Ozempic was associated with a 25% lower risk of a broader set of outcomes including heart attack, stroke, hospitalization for unstable angina or heart failure, and death from any cause.
Ozempic remains the only GLP-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1 RA) with proven risk reduction of cardiovascular and kidney events in people with type 2 diabetes, and these real-world data add to the growing evidence supporting its use over dulaglutide in this patient population.