Adults aren’t the only ones participating in the Wegovy and Ozempic trend. A new study shows the number of young adults and adolescents taking the popular weight-loss drugs jumped nearly 600 percent from 2020 to 2023. These drugs belong to a class called glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists and have soared in popularity over the past few years.
The study showed that the number of 12-to-25-year-olds using any GLP-1 receptor agonist, including medications approved to manage Type 2 diabetes, increased from about 8,700 per month in 2020 to more than 60,000 per month in 2023, marking a nearly 594.4 percent increase. Endocrinologists were the medical professionals most likely to prescribe the drugs to adolescents (32.
7 percent), while over one in four adolescents received their prescriptions from nurse practitioners. One in three young adults received prescriptions from nurse practitioners, while family medicine doctors prescribed 22.9 percent of the drugs.
“Increases in [GLP-1 receptor agonists] dispensing were greatest for females, highlighting the importance of educating patients and prescribers on sex-specific safety risks,” such as pregnancy risks, the researchers wrote. About 20 percent of American children are obese, according to the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Alongside obesity comes additional health issues, including heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, and some types of cancer. Obesity is also a financial burden, costing the U.
S. .
