Wegovy cuts risk of heart attack, stroke or death by 57% compared to tirzepatide in real-world study of people with obesity and cardiovascular disease – Novo Nordisk
Novo Nordisk presented data from the STEER real-world study of evidence gathered from actual patient experiences at the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Congress 2025 in Madrid, Spain. The STEER study investigated the risk of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) with Wegovy (semaglutide 2.4 mg) compared with tirzepatide treatment in people with overweight or obesity and established CVD without diabetes.
Compared with tirzepatide, Wegovy showed a significant 57% greater risk reduction for heart attack, stroke and cardiovascular-related death or death from any cause, in people with overweight or obesity and CVD, who did not have any gaps in their treatment lasting more than 30 days. There were 15 (0.1%) of these cardiovascular events recorded with Wegovy, and 39 events (0.4%) were recorded with tirzepatide. The average follow-up duration was 3.8 months for the Wegovy group and 4.3 months for the tirzepatide group.
In all treated people, regardless of any gaps in their treatment, Wegovy showed a significant 29% risk reduction for heart attack, stroke and death from any cause compared with tirzepatide (over an average follow-up of 8.3 months for Wegovy and 8.6 months for tirzepatide).
“Our landmark trial, SELECT, showed that Wegovy is associated with a significant 20% risk reduction of cardiovascular events, backed up with even greater risk reductions in the real-world studies SCORE and STEER. The results are clear – STEER demonstrates that Wegovy cuts the risk of heart attack, stroke or death by 57% compared to tirzepatide,” said Ludovic Helfgott, executive vice president and head of Product & Portfolio Strategy at Novo Nordisk. “This data confirms that semaglutide stands apart as the only available GLP-1-based medication with proven cardiovascular benefits for people living with obesity and cardiovascular disease, without diabetes.”
Additionally, in all treated people, regardless of any gaps in their treatment, people treated with Wegovy experienced fewer events of heart attack, stroke and cardiovascular-related death than people treated with tirzepatide.
About the real-world STEER study:
Real-world studies of evidence gathered from actual patient experiences can complement randomised control trials, which are the gold standard for evaluating the safety and efficacy of a treatment. STEER was a retrospective, observational real-world study, evaluating the efficacy of Wegovy (semaglutide 2.4 mg) versus tirzepatide for the prevention of MACE in US adults with overweight or obesity and established CVD with no prior history of diabetes, with a primary outcome measure of revised 5-point MACE (heart attack, stroke, hospitalisation for heart failure, coronary revascularisation, and death from any cause) and revised 3-point MACE (heart attack, stroke and death from any cause). Non-revised 5-point and 3-point MACE was also studied, which included cardiovascular-related death rather than death from any cause.
The study included people from the US Komodo Research database (1 January 2016 to 31 January 2025) aged ≥45 years and started treatment with Wegovy or tirzepatide on or after 13 May 2022. Each treatment group comprised 10,625 people. To ensure both groups were comparable, researchers used propensity score matching to compare Wegovy users and tirzepatide users with similar characteristics. After matching, characteristics were well-balanced between the treatment groups. The main analysis included all people who started treatment, regardless of any gaps in their therapy, while a sensitivity analysis evaluated outcomes only in people who did not have any gaps in their treatment lasting more than 30 consecutive days.
About the SELECT trial and SCORE real-world study:
SELECT was a randomised, double-blind, parallel-group, placebo-controlled trial designed to evaluate the efficacy of Wegovy (semaglutide 2.4 mg) versus placebo as an adjunct to standard of care for the prevention of MACE in people with overweight or obesity and established CVD with no prior history of diabetes. People included in the trial were aged ≥45 years with a body mass index (BMI) of ≥27 kg/m2. The primary objective of the SELECT trial was to demonstrate the superiority of Wegovy compared to placebo with respect to reducing the incidence of 3-point MACE consisting of cardiovascular death, non-fatal heart attack (myocardial infarction) or non-fatal stroke.
SCORE was a real-world study in the US that analysed MACE outcomes among Wegovy (semaglutide 2.4 mg) users and non-users in real-world clinical practice, who met similar inclusion criteria as in the SELECT trial and were aged ≥45 years with overweight or obesity and established CVD without diabetes.
