The risk of type 2 diabetes (T2D) is more than halved by weekly injections of a new obesity drug, according to new research to be presented at the annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) in Stockholm, Sweden (September 19-23). Semaglutide (sold under brand name Wegovy [see ad for one seller] and made by Novo Nordisk) is a glucagon-like peptide receptor protein that was recently approved in the USA as an obesity treatment (1) and has been provisionally approved to treat obesity in England (2). “Semaglutide appears to be the most effective medication to date for treating obesity and is beginning to close the gap with the amount of weight loss following bariatric surgery,” says W. Timothy Garvey, MD, Professor of Medicine in the Department of Nutrition Sciences, University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), Birmingham, Alabama, USA, who led the research. “Its approval was based on clinical trial results showing that it reduces weight by over 15% on average, when used together with a healthy lifestyle program. This amount of weight loss is sufficient to treat or prevent a broad array of obesity complications that impair health and quality of life and is a game changer in obesity medicine.”