In February 2021 i first results of a clinical trial on semaglutide – the active ingredient of drugs such asOzempic o il Wegovy – for the treatment of obesity they turned out to be nothing short of surprising. The study in question showed that people who took the drug weekly lost an average of 15% of their body weight – an extraordinary result for a weight-loss drug.
The research in question and the subsequent approval of Wegovy in the United States for the treatment of obesity have started a unprecedented demand for this new generation of drugs. The demand for Wegovy was so high that its manufacturer, Novo Nordisk, was forced to suspend advertising on television in May 2023 in order to gain the time necessary to produce sufficient supplies. The problem is that semaglutide is also used to treat type 2 diabetesand in several countries – includingItalia – people suffering from the disease now struggle to find the medicines needed for their treatment.
To complicate the situation, it is likely that people using these drugs for the purpose of losing weight will have to continue therapy indefinitely to keep their weight under control. This is not a surprising fact – the same also applies to other types of slimming treatments – but it represents a thorny problem if we consider that a significant number of people stop taking them after relatively short periods. In short, we may have drugs that can produce significant weight loss, but we should also ask ourselves what happens to people who stop taking treatment.
High dropout rates
These new medicines fall into a group of drugs called GLP-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 RAs), which work by mimicking a hormone that regulates blood sugar levels and suppressing appetite by slowing the stomach’s release of food. Although their use for the treatment of obesity is new, these drugs have been used for the management of type 2 diabetes for some time: the first GLP-1 RA was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2005. Since then we have some real-world data on the average duration of GLP-1 RA therapies and reasons why people stop them.
One study analyzed data on GLP-1 RA prescriptions in the United Kingdom between 2009 and 2017discovering that of the 589 patients who had started taking this type of drug, 45% had stopped treatment within 12 months and 65% within 24. The same group of scientists also conducted the same research in the United States, but included a much larger sample of diabetic patients. The new study found a drug abandonment rate similar to that observed in the United Kingdom: after 12 months from the start of therapy, 47% of patients had stopped taking the GLP-1 AR, while after 24 months the percentage rose to 70%. On average, the duration of the period of taking the drug was approximately 13 months.
2023-11-25 17:00:00
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