Why the unit price gap of the weight loss drug GLP-1 is nearly ten times?

Semaglutide is exaggerated, isn't it? 

"We find that liraglutide and semaglutide are both GLP-1. Why does one cost RMB 110 and the other one RMB 1,130? Is there any difference in the curative effect? Is there any basis for drug pricing? Or it is just because that semaglutide is exaggerated by capital." Let's simply analyze whether it is artificially high, or it is expensive because of the curative effect. 

First, according to the instruction on the Internet, the indication of semaglutide is the blood glucose control of adult patients with diabetes mellitus type 2, especially those who have no obvious therapeutic effect after using metformin and/or sulfonylurea drugs. 

Although liraglutide is also suitable for adult patients with diabetes mellitus type 2, it needs to be applied together with metformin or sulfonylurea for patients who have failed to respond to one of them. 

When metformin or sulfonylureas fails to meet the requirements alone, liraglutide combined with them can play a therapeutic role, and semaglutide can take effect alone. 

Second, the medication frequency of liraglutide and semaglutide is once a day and once a week respectively. We know that the compliance of a drug is related to user-friendly factor. Considering that they are all injections, even if it doesn't hurt any more when injected, it is definitely better to do this once a week than once a day. In this aspect, semaglutide wins a complete victory over liraglutide. Moreover, from the frequency of purchase, one box of semaglutide can be used one month, and the same amount of liraglutide can be used about half a month. In this way, we should judge the cost by considering the duration instead of simply by the unit price. 

Third, in terms of the effect of weight loss, it must be pointed out that neither of these two drugs can be used for the weight loss according to available instructions. Their essence is still diabetes medicine instead of diet pills. Therefore, it is not suitable to promote them with the weight loss as a cover, which is only a "side effect" beneficial to patients in the process of medication. According to instructions, when the baseline is 95.5kg, the weight loss after 40 weeks of the administration of semaglutide is 6.5kg; and when the baseline is 92.6kg, that after 52 weeks of the administration of liraglutide is 2.45kg. 

Therefore, the medication time of liraglutide is longer and the weight loss is less.

Actually, the winner has been decided referring to the weight loss index, but semaglutide may have more advantages in terms of price factors. Of course, the pricing of a drug is far from being converted by costs. When a drug is priced at cost, it must be a period that many competing products of the same kind grab the market share or are under the centralized procurement. 

Under normal circumstances, the price of new drugs will be slightly lower than the treatment cost of existing drugs with the same curative effect, so as to improve the cost performance and bring advantages to the market layout. In other words, even if your cost is RMB 1, and that of existing drugs on the market  to treat the same disease is RMB 100 and the treatment process is 7 days, as long as your treatment cost is less than RMB 100 and the time is less than seven days, there will be advantages. Of course, if you can reduce the price and treatment process at the same time, the market advantage will be even greater. No medicine can get rid of the profit attribute of commodities. 

Therefore, the price difference is determined by taking into account medication compliance, combination, and effects. Of course, it is also possible for enterprises to stimulate other drug markets by raising prices of advantageous projects. 

It should be noted that these two drugs may have been snapped up by many overweight people who do not have diabetes because they have the effect of losing weight. It was even reported that diabetic patients had no medicines because they were bought by people desiring for the weight loss. 

However, even if no consideration of specifications in instructions, the dosage used for weight loss and blood glucose control is completely different. The dosage for weight loss is much larger than that of blood glucose control. Therefore, some people get the medicine, only to find that it doesn't achieve the expected effect at all.

Of course, semaglutide has also been applied to clinical trials of oral preparations, which are used to study indications for weight loss. After all, there is a strong correlation between obesity and diabetes, and if the weight is not controlled, it is possible to increase the probability of having the disease. On the other hand, too many people expect to lose weight by spending more money instead of exercising and dieting. 

In the treatment of diabetes, the choice of these two drugs should be based on physical conditions and doctors' opinions. As they are not OTC and the weight loss effect is still in the clinical stage, we should not exaggerate the effect. Too high expectation is also not conducive to the normal operation of enterprises.