Semaglutide guidelines based on BMI may exclude at-risk Indians

The SELECT trial, led by A. Michael Lincoff and published in The New England Journal of Medicine (2023), showed that once-weekly semaglutide reduced major cardiovascular events by 20% in adults with a body mass index (BMI) of 27 or higher and pre-existing cardiovascular disease, but without diabetes. The trial enrolled 17,604 participants and tracked outcomes over nearly 40 months.

But applying this BMI threshold in India could exclude patients at risk, says Aditi Kantipuly, preventive medicine and public health resident at McGill University and visiting scholar at the University of New Mexico.