Mounjaro Price Increase: What Are Your Options?

As you may have read, Eli Lilly, the manufacturer of the popular weight loss injection Mounjaro (tirzepatide), has increased the wholesale price of the treatment in the UK.  If you’re currently using Mounjaro, you’re probably wondering what options are available to you and how your weight loss journey may be affected.

In this article, we’ll discuss how you can respond to the Mounjaro price increase and explain the reasons behind the upheaval. 

Mounjaro Price Increase: Your Options

At the moment, there are two main avenues to choose from. They are:

• Switch to a New Treatment: Your first option is to change to another weight loss medication that isn’t affected by the Mounjaro price increase. We would recommend Wegovy for this purpose, as it’s the closest to Mounjaro in terms of dosage schedule and how the injection is administered.
• Continue on Mounjaro: Alternatively, you could continue with your Mounjaro regimen. Unfortunately, this would mean that the cost of your treatment would go up. There may even be issues with stock levels in the short term as customers try to prepare for the price hike before it comes into effect.

At Prescription Doctor, we’re committed to providing a straightforward and cost-effective service to our customers. We would therefore recommend that you consider switching to Wegovy and continue your weight loss journey without needing to worry about a potentially significant increase in price. 

How to Switch to Wegovy

If you do decide to change from Mounjaro to Wegovy, Prescription Doctor is committed to making the process as safe and straightforward as possible. Simply place a treatment request for Wegovy, and our experienced clinicians will take care of the rest.

While most people currently using Mounjaro will be eligible for Wegovy, we will carefully check a number of factors before prescribing the new medication. These include:

• Your current Mounjaro dose
• If you’ve experienced side effects 
• How you’ve been handling the side effects of Mounjaro
• How long you’ve been on Mounjaro treatment, and how you’ve responded so far

If your Wegovy order is approved, you can take your first dose of the new treatment 7 days after your last dose of Mounjaro. When it comes to your starting strength of Wegovy, this will be determined by your current Mounjaro dose. Please note that this will usually involve you starting on a slightly lower dose of Wegovy to minimise the risk of side effects and ensure your safety.

Our recommended starting doses of Wegovy are shown in the table below: 

Current Mounjaro Dose	Starting Wegovy Dose
2.5 mg	0.25 mg
5 mg	0.5 mg
7.5 mg	0.5 mg
10 mg	1 mg
12.5 mg	1 mg
15 mg	1 mg

If you have experienced any issues or concerns relating to side effects during your Mounjaro journey, our clinicians may recommend starting on a lower Wegovy dose than what is listed in the table above. All decisions relating to the appropriate starting dose of Wegovy will be made on a case-by-case basis. 

Once you have started your Wegovy treatment, you will typically follow the standard dosage schedule for that medication.  

Why Choose Wegovy?

Like Mounjaro, Wegovy is a once-weekly subcutaneous injection that can deliver some impressive weight loss results in its own right. The STEP 1 clinical trial found that around 30% of Wegovy patients lost at least 20% of their starting body weight. This is compared to just 1.7% who were given a placebo.

Wegovy also became the first (and currently still the only) weight loss drug to be approved in the UK for people with established cardiovascular disease. This further enhances the potential of Wegovy beyond simply helping people shed pounds.

One of the main reasons that Mounjaro is considered to be more effective than Wegovy for weight loss is that the former has a higher maintenance dose (15 mg of tirzepatide vs 2.4 mg of semaglutide) than the latter. This gap could shorten, however, as Wegovy’s manufacturers have submitted a new 7.2 mg dose to the European Medicines Agency (EMA).