American adolescents are increasingly resorting to the drug weight Wegovy as more families and their doctors trust their use for young people with obesity, according to new data shared with Reuters.
The average adolescents that begin treatment with the highly effective drug of Novo Nordisk grew 50% last year to 14.8 recipes per 100,000 adolescents, according to an analysis of the Truveta health data firm.
That is an increase with respect to a rate of 9.9 recipes per 100,000 in 2023, the first full year in which Wegovy was available for children 12 years or more. The average rate rose even more during the first three months of this year, reaching 17.3 new recipes per 100,000.
That still represents a tiny fraction of the 23,000 out of every 100,000 adolescents in the country who live with obesity, and is much slower than acceptance among EU adults.
“It is promising that younger ones are using these medications, but it is still a very small percentage of patients with serious obesity those who have access to them,” said Dr. Cate Varney, director of Medicine of the Obesity of the Health System of the University of Virginia. “When changes in lifestyle are not enough, we need these additional tools.”
For analysis, Truveta reviewed the electronic health records of 1.3 million patients from 12 to 17 years. The data covers 30 US health systems with more than 900 hospitals and 20,000 clinics throughout the country.
The analysis did not include other GLP-1 drugs, such as Ozempic de Novo and Eli Lilly Zepbound, which are not approved to treat obesity in adolescents, or versions composed of these therapies.
Wegovy became an option to treat teenagers at the end of 2022 after decades in which conventional diet, exercise and advice approaches failed largely.
Around 8 million American adolescents, or 23 percent of people aged 12 to 19, have obesity, compared to 5 percent in 1980, according to US government data, young people run a much higher risk of developing chronic, expensive conditions and that shorten life, such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular and liver diseases.
In January 2023, the American Pediatrics Academy strongly recommended that doctors provide weights to lose weight to children with obesity from the age of 12. However, the medical community has not evenly adopted LPG-1 for adolescents.
Some doctors doubt because the long -term security of children for children during a critical phase of development is unknown, and treatments may be used indefinitely.
In general, there are limited options for many adolescents and their parents because insurance plans often do not cover any treatment for obesity, including intensive behavioral advice, visits with a dietitian or new GLP-1 medications.
In the Nemours Pediatric Hospital in Wilmington, Delaware, the healthy weight clinic and well -being treated about 2,000 teenage patients last year.
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Wegovy consumption among eu adolescents increases 50% as the obesity crisis worsens
About 25 percent were prescribed Wegovy or other GLP-1 medicine, said Dr. Thao-Ly Phan, medical director of the clinic. The number of adolescents with a LPG-1 recipe almost doubled with respect to 2023.
On average, their patients who took a GLP-1 drug lost 15 pounds (6.8 kg) within 6 to 12 months, and almost 30 pounds after more than a year.
For many of the other patients, medicines were not an option, either due to insurance obstacles or concern within families about potential risks. Other adolescents opted for changes in the oldest and cheap lifestyle or drugs to lose weight, with some success.
“It is important for us to continue monitoring and better understanding the results of medicines, both positive and negative, before generalized use,” said Phan.
The United States Secretary of Health, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has widely criticized the idea of prescribing Ozempic or Wegovy to children to treat obesity.
In a federal health report that published last month, GLP-1 medications were summoned as an example of the “overmedicalization of our children.” He pointed out a “long -term security data, which raises the spectrum of unforeseen problems that interrupt, damage or harm metabolism and growth development”.
In a statement, Novo said that the semaglutida, the active ingredient of Wegovy and Ozempic, “did not seem to affect pubertal growth or development” during their clinical trials with adolescents.
For many adults, said Novo, obesity begins in childhood or adolescence, and “we trust proven safety and efficiency of our GLP-1 medications.”
Eli Lilly’s weight loss medication, Zepbound, is found in advanced stage clinical trials for adolescents. Lilly told Reuters that “to date there has been no evidence to suggest a deterioration in growth or metabolism” of GLP-1 medications.
Dr. Robert Siegel, pediatrician and center director for better health and nutrition at Cincinnati Pediatric Hospital, said that about 15 percent of adolescents who were treated there received Wegovy recipes or a similar LPG-1 medicine between July 2021 and July 2023. They include patients who receive treatment for type 2 diabetes for which GLP-1 medicines were originally developed.
Siegel said that he prefers that adolescents begin with three to six months of intensive lifestyle management before even considering medication.
Although obesity specialists can help overcome the potential risks of drugs, many primary care providers need more training, he said. They may not have the equipment to control the loss of muscle mass, a side effect of these medications, or that they lack the resources to work with families during a prolonged period in a healthier diet and exercise.
“It is likely that these medications are needed for a long time to maintain the weight,” said Siegel, “and we only have a relatively short -term experience with them.”
With Reuters information.
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