You can’t deny the buzz
You can’t deny the buzz. Credit Suisse analyst Trung Huynh has combed through social media and is impressed by the awareness — and demand — for GLP-1 medications such as Eli Lilly ‘s Mounjaro. “Although we caution posts may have responder bias, and comments are in the public domain and unconfirmed, nonetheless we have parsed through and curated an archive of the most interesting observations that provide an alternative perspective to traditional data, in our view,” Huynh said in a research note Thursday. Among those observations are reports of other potential benefits that patients taking Mounjaro, or tirzepatide, are seeing. To recap, Mounjaro has been approved as a treatment for type 2 diabetes, but the drug is expected to be cleared by the Food and Drug Administration, possibly by the end of this year, to treat obesity and overweight. Patients enrolled in Lilly’s studies have lost as much as 20% or more of their initial weight when taking the drug, topping results from other available medications. The company is also conducting several additional trials to explore the use of tirzepatide to treat other conditions like sleep apnea. Huynh reported seeing social media posts where people with sleep apnea said they were able to get better sleep quality or discontinue the use of a CPAP machine after losing weight on Mounjaro. Others taking the drug reported benefits such as a reduction in addiction behaviors such as smoking, drinking, gambling and shopping, among other things. “Although relatively unsurprising given the literature suggests GLP agonism suppresses hedonic food intake through the brain reward pathway, we are very interested in the potentially far-reaching effect beyond obesity and T2D,” Huynh said. He noted that other comments suggested uses for the drug to treat infertility and polycystic ovary syndrome, a condition that has a 50% to 60% overlap with obesity. Although Lilly hasn’t said it’s exploring this indication, Novo Nordisk — which has a rival GLP-1 medication, semaglutide — has registered a new study to evaluate this. The biggest point of caution is that social media chatter suggests that health insurance providers are becoming more restrictive with reimbursement. However, this may be a function of patients who are trying to use Mounjaro off-label for obesity, he said. GLP-1 medications carry hefty price tags. To assist with payments, Lilly is offering a $575 copay coupon that expires at the end of the year, Huynh said. Credit Suisse has an outperform rating on Lilly shares, with a $490 price target, which implies more than 9% upside from where Lilly shares closed Wednesday. LLY YTD mountain LLY in 2023 — AsumeTech’s Michael Bloom contributed reporting.