The obesity drug helped patients reduce their waist size by an extra two inches compared to those on Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy in a head-to-head study of the two drugs.

Eli Lilly said on Sunday its drug Zepbound was superior to Novo Nordisk's Wegovy across five weight-loss targets such as reducing waist circumference, citing data from a head-to-head trial. The data is the first head-to-head trial comparing the wildly popular medicines,

At 72 weeks, participants using Zepbound saw an average weight-loss reduction of 20.2% versus 13.7% with Novo Nordisk’s own treatment, Eli Lilly said of the results presented at the European Congress on Obesity and published in the New England Journal of Medicine.