(Bloomberg) – For the first time in a decade, obesity in the U.S. is declining — and a new study suggests it’s due to wildly popular medications like Ozempic.
The number of obese Americans has been rising steadily over the years, and the country’s average body mass index, or BMI, has also been rising. But in 2023, something changed: obesity levels fell from 44.1% to 43.96% compared to the previous year. It’s a small drop, but a significant one, according to the researchers.
The biggest change occurred in the South, according to the analysis, which also had the highest concentration of prescriptions written for weight-loss medications.
The results, published Friday in the JAMA Health Forum, suggest that blockbuster drugs like Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy and Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro and Zepbound may actually be starting to make a difference in the epidemic. of obesity in America.
“We’re already seeing the impact in the data,” Benjamin Rader, the computational epidemiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital who led the study, said in an interview.
Rader and his colleagues analyzed electronic health records and de-identified insurance claims for millions of American adults to track the prevalence of obesity over the past decade.
Continues after advertising
They used the claims data to map prescriptions for drugs like Ozempic and Mounjaro, which are part of a class of drugs known as GLP-1s.
Millions of Americans struggle with obesity, which is known to increase the risk of dangerous health conditions, including diabetes, heart disease and cancer. The growing percentage of Americans who are overweight and obese is expected to strain the healthcare system and significantly increase medical costs over the next 25 years if the trend does not reverse, according to a recent study published in the journal Medical The Lancet.
Access is a challenge
Safe and effective weight-loss medications have the potential to change that trajectory, experts said, but their use has been hampered by widespread supply shortages and high prices that make access difficult.
Continues after advertising
Even with these challenges, the drugs are starting to have an impact, Rader said. “Although obesity continues to be a significant public health concern, the observed reductions in obesity prevalence suggest an encouraging reversal from previous, long-standing increases,” the researchers wrote.
The drug’s impact was most evident in the South, where obesity rates fell from 46% to 45% compared to the previous year. In this region, 6% of residents, on average, received a prescription for weight loss and diabetes medications, compared with 5.1% in the Midwest, 4.4% in the Northeast, and 3.4% in the West.
Obesity rates in other regions remained stable — except in the West, where they increased. The researchers cautioned that the South experienced a disproportionately high number of Covid-19 deaths among individuals with obesity, which could have impacted their findings.
Continues after advertising
However, the highest number of Covid deaths occurred before 2023, so this would not explain the entire drop, they said.
Rader expects to see reductions in obesity-related health conditions, such as cardiovascular disease, as access to medications improves.
Currently, fewer than 20 state Medicaid programs cover these weight loss medications. Medicare, the government health plan for older Americans, does not currently cover weight-loss medications — although a proposal from the Biden administration could soon change that.
Continues after advertising
About 60% of employers have chosen to cover shots for their employees.
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.
