liraglutide
Article
liraglutide is a recurring brand in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between November 30, 2022 and March 12, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “Saxenda (liraglutide) for weight loss”; “Liraglutide (Victoza®, Saxenda®)“. It most often appears alongside Eli Lilly, FDA, Novo Nordisk.
Metadata
- Category: Brands
- Mention count: 2
- Issue count: 2
- First seen: November 30, 2022
- Last seen: March 12, 2025
Appears In
Related Pages
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- Eli Lilly (2 shared issues)
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- FDA (2 shared issues)
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- Novo Nordisk (2 shared issues)
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- Novo Nordisk (2 shared issues)
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- semaglutide (2 shared issues)
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- tirzepatide (2 shared issues)
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- Adam (1 shared issues)
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- AMG-133 (1 shared issues)
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- amoxicillin suspension (1 shared issues)
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- amylin analogue cagrilintide (1 shared issues)
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- anorexia (1 shared issues)
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- ASMBS (1 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
First, the low volume for semaglutide that you are observing is at least partially due to supply shortages. The drug has been in serious shortage for a while. Novo Nordisk also sells Saxenda (liraglutide) for weight loss. Over the last 2 quarters, Saxenda sales are up 59%, while Wegovy sales are down 18%. Saxenda is priced similarly, and Wegovy is a better product. So I suspect a lot of the Saxenda spending would be going towards Wegovy in the absence of the semaglutide supply shortage.
Inline links: supply shortages, sales
Liraglutide (Victoza®, Saxenda®)
Liraglutide (Victoza®, Saxenda®) …but liraglutide is noticeably worse than the others, and most people prefer either semaglutide or tirzepatide. These cost about $1000/month and are rarely covered by insurance, putting them out of reach for most Americans. …if you buy them from the pharma companies, like a chump. For the past three years, there’s been a shortage of these drugs. FDA regulations say that during a shortage, it’s semi-legal for compounding pharmacies to provide medications without getting the patent-holders’ permission. In practice, that means they get cheap peptides from China, do some minimal safety testing in house, and sell them online. So for the past three years, telehealth startups working with compounding pharmacies have sold these drugs for about $200/month. Over two million Americans have made use of this loophole to get weight loss drugs for cheap. But there was always a looming question - what happens when the shortage ends? Many people have to stay on GLP-1 drugs permanently, or else they risk regaining their lost weight. But many can’t afford $1000/month. What happens to them? Now we’ll find out. At the end of last year, the FDA declared the shortage over. The compounding pharmacies appealed the decision, but the FDA recently confirmed its decision is final. As of March 19 (for tirzepatide) and April 22 (for semaglutide), compounding pharmacies can no longer sell cheap GLP-1 drugs. Let’s take a second to think of the real victims here: telehealth company stockholders. Some compounding pharmacies are already telling their customers to look elsewhere, but not everyone is going gently into the good night. I’m seeing telehealth companies float absolutely amazing medicolegal theories, like: Compounding pharmacies are allowed to provide patients with a drug if they can’t tolerate the commercially available doses and need a special compounding dose. Perhaps our patients who were previously on semaglutide 0.5 mg now need, uh, semaglutide 0.51 mg. In fact, they need exactly 0.51 mg or they’ll die! Since the pharma companies don’t make 0.51 mg doses, it has to be compounded and we can still sell it.