THE MEDICINES REGULATOR has ruled in favour of the legality of advertising by Novo Nordisk, the manufacturer of the blockbuster weight-loss drugs marketed as Ozempic and Wegovy.

The Danish pharma giant ran a campaign about obesity on bus stops, billboards and in broadcast media in Ireland earlier this year.

It is illegal to advertise prescription drugs in Ireland. Novo Nordisk’s brand name was on the ads, but the names of its high-profile products, used to treat obesity, were not.

The Health Products Regulatory Authority (HPRA) told The Journal this weekend that it had engaged with Novo Nordisk in relation to this campaign.

It said Irish law controlling the advertising of medicines included an exemption for “disease awareness campaigns”. The 2007 law allows such advertising once there is “no reference, even indirect, to medicinal products”.

The HPRA said Novo Nordisk’s campaign contained no direct or indirect reference to a specific medicine, so it had deemed them compliant with the law.

The advertising ran on buses, bus stops and billboards, as well as in the media. Eimer McAuley / The Journal Eimer McAuley / The Journal / The Journal

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), which also investigated the ads on foot of complaints, said it had closed the cases against Novo Nordisk.

It did not explain the basis on which the cases were closed.

The advertising watchdog stated process had concluded “informally”, which meant resolution had been found between the ASA executive and the parties to the complaint.

Novo Nordisk has been approached for comment. It has previously defended its campaign as containing no reference to medicines or brand names.

BMI

The campaign, with the tagline “It’s about my health, not just my weight”, directed people to a website, TruthAboutWeight.ie, which provided information about obesity. 

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The home page invited people to use a body mass index (BMI) calculator, to tell them whether they are a healthy weight for their height. A BMI of 18.5-24.9 is considered healthy, with 25-29.9 overweight and anything above that obese.

For a BMI above 25, the website suggested that, depending on whether there are any weight-related complications, treatments that could be recommended included low-calorie diets, bariatric surgery, or weight-loss medication.

Like the ads, the website did not mention any named prescription drugs.

About one in five people in Ireland over the age of 15 has obesity, according to government surveys. Obesity is a chronic disease. Thousands of Irish people have been prescribed Ozempic to treat their obesity.