Amid burgeoning global demand for effective diabetes medicines, including GLP-1 agonists like Novo Nordisk's Ozempic (semaglutide) and Eli Lilly's Trulicity (dulaglutide), a new study suggests these treatments are virtually out of reach in low- and middle-income countries due to significant price markups and barriers to generic manufacturing.
The study conducted by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) was published this week in JAMA Open Network. Investigators estimated the cost of manufacturing insulins, GLP-1s and SGLT2 inhibitors, then calculated "sustainable" cost-based prices and compared these with current market prices for serval products. The market prices were derived from 13 countries, collected from public databases in January 2023.