July 11, 2024 – The appeal of weight reduction drugs appears to be fading rapidly: More than 80% of users stop taking medication inside two years.
A recent evaluation of insurance claims data found that 85% of people that first began doping up like Ozempic stopped taking them two years later, and 71% of individuals stopped taking them inside a yr.
The Research was conducted by employees of Magellan Rx Management and its parent company Prime Therapeutics, each of that are Minnesota-based pharmacy profit management corporations. The researchers analyzed claims from 3,364 individuals who had began taking one in every of several drugs in a category called GLP-1 agonists, which incorporates Ozempic. The average age of the people was 46.5 years, and 81% were women.
After one yr, 29% of individuals were still taking the medication, and after two years the figure was still slightly below 15%.
All of the individuals who participated within the study were chubby or had obesity and commenced taking the drugs in 2021. The study relied heavily on data on off-label use, as researchers excluded individuals with diabetes (some GLP-1s were approved by the FDA only to be used by individuals with diabetes in 2021). Since then, most of the same drugs have been approved solely for weight reduction. Later in 2021, a version of Ozempic was approved by the FDA for people without diabetes and is marketed under the brand name Wegovy.
The researchers reported that 24% of individuals of their study took Wegovy and 22% took Ozempic, and that users of those two drugs were probably to persist with them for the total two years. About 1 in 4 people taking Ozempic or Wegovy continued taking the drugs for a similar period.
Twenty-six percent of study participants switched medications throughout the two-year study period. Other medications utilized by study participants included Saxenda and Victoza, which, while not as effective as newer drugs, are sometimes required by insurance firms as a condition for coverage of other treatments.
The manufacturer of Ozempic and Wegovy, Novo Nordisk, said this recent evaluation had necessary limitations and told the news agency Reuters in a press release that they “do not believe these data are sufficient to draw conclusions about overall patient adherence and durability to various GLP-1 drugs, including our treatments.”
The researchers wrote that the high rate of drug discontinuation was worrying.
“The benefit of GLP-1 products is likely not achieved if they are discontinued within the first two years of therapy. These poor outcomes in obesity treatment with GLP-1 underscore the potential for significant wastage of investment in GLP-1 therapy, the importance of developing obesity treatment programs to improve treatment adherence, and entering into value-based contracts with pharmaceutical manufacturers,” the report authors wrote.
GLP-1 supplements work by mimicking hormonal processes within the body that result in a sense of fullness. However, these drugs are also related to many uncomfortable side effects, including stomach problems. They are administered by injection and are also expensive and sometimes only available in limited quantities. Clinical studies have shown that some people were capable of lose greater than 20% of their body weight, although less was more common.
Discontinuation of medicines has also been often documented in clinical trials, with researchers saying it was resulting from uncomfortable side effects. However, this latest evaluation didn't provide any information on why people stopped taking the medications.
Other analyses have shown that weight gain often occurs after stopping consumption. study by Novo Nordisk found that folks who took Wegovy for a yr and about 4 months lost a median of 17% of their body weight, but stopped treatment at that time as a part of the research design after which regained two-thirds of their weight inside the subsequent yr.