Semaglutide, а glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist, is primarily a drug for the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) which reduces the risk of adverse cardiovascular events in patients with diabetes.
December 2023, the New England Journal of Medicine published results of the SELECT study that demonstrated the use of semaglutide in reducing cardiovascular risk complications in obese/overweight patients (body mass index (BMI) ≥ 27 kg/m2) and without DM.
The SELECT study is a multicenter, double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, event-driven superiority trial. The primary endpoints were: a composite of death from cardiovascular causes, nonfatal myocardial infarction, or nonfatal stroke in a time-to-first-event analysis. Safety was also assessed.
The study included 17604 patients with cardiovascular disease aged 45 years or older with a BMI ≥27 kg/m2, without a history of DM (8803 received semaglutide (subcutaneous injections of semaglutide once weekly at a dose of 2.4 mg), 8801 received placebo). The follow-up time was 39.8±9.4 months.
A primary cardiovascular end-point event occurred in 569 of the 8803 patients (6.5%) in the semaglutide group and in 701 of the 8801 patients (8.0%) in the placebo group (hazard ratio, 0.80; 95% confidence interval, 0.72 to 0.90; P<0.001). Adverse events leading to permanent discontinuation of the trial product occurred in 1461 patients (16.6%) in the semaglutide group and 718 patients (8.2%) in the placebo group (P<0.001).
In patients with preexisting cardiovascular disease and overweight or obesity but without DM, weekly subcutaneous semaglutide at a dose of 2.4 mg reduces the incidence of death from cardiovascular causes, nonfatal myocardial infarction, or nonfatal stroke.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2307563?query=recirc_curatedRelated_article
