Novo Nordisk's (NYSE: NVO) Ozempic is indicated to treat diabetes, and its wild success and household name is making a few cardiometabolic device companies rather nervous. With a powerful tool to manage blood glucose levels in hand, patients may not have as much of a need for the glucose monitors and insulin pumps they formerly relied on, so the fearful argument goes. And newer drugs like Eli Lilly's Mounjaro are likely to exacerbate the same trend.

But at least two device companies, Abbott Laboratories (NYSE: ABT) and , (NASDAQ: DXCM) are actually anticipating that Ozempic and its peer medicines will give their businesses a boost. Here's how that might work, and how much it could help their share prices over the next few years.

Therapies made by Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly like Ozempic, Wegovy, Rybelsus, Mounjaro, and Zepbound treat diabetes and also obesity by prompting the patient's body to produce more insulin after they eat food, thereby lowering their blood glucose level after meals to within healthy ranges. Persistently high blood glucose levels, as occurs in untreated type 2 diabetes, are a major risk factor for developing cardiovascular illness. Separately, even in people who do not have diabetes, obesity is also a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease. So it isn't all that surprising to learn that those same medicines have been proven in a handful of different scientific investigations to reduce people's cardiovascular disease risks as a consequence of lowering their blood glucose levels and helping them to shed their excess weight.

Continue reading

Source Fool.com