(Reuters) -Canada’s health regulator has approved Novo Nordisk’s diabetes drug, Ozempic, to reduce the risk of kidney failure and disease progression, as well as death due to heart problems in diabetes patients with chronic kidney disease, the Danish drugmaker said on Tuesday.

The approval makes Novo’s Ozempic, which belongs to the GLP-1 class of drugs, the first approved treatment in Canada to address type 2 diabetes as well as related kidney disease progression, the drugmaker said.

The drug gained U.S. approval for the same indication earlier this year.

(Reporting by Mariam Sunny in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)

See Full Page