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The NHS must accelerate its use of weight loss jabs, experts have said, as society enters a “golden age” of such medications.
Obesity is linked to numerous long-term conditions including cancer, heart disease, dementia and diabetes, putting a huge strain on the NHS.
Trials show that weight loss jabs such as semaglutide, better known as Wegovy and Ozempic, are associated with a reduced risk of 42 conditions, including cancer and cardiovascular disease.
Worldwide, about 3.8 billion people over 25 and just under 750 million children and young people are forecast to be overweight or obese by 2050.
New research, presented at the European Congress on Obesity on Tuesday, and sponsored by manufacturer Novo Nordisk, calculated that Wegovy can reduce the risk of heart attack, stroke or early death within three months of treatment – before people are able to lose much weight.
Prof Donna Ryan, of Pennington Biomedical Research Center, co-author of the research, told the conference the results “should change public policy everywhere”. She said that in the US, the Medicare system (funded by government) now prescribed the drugs to all patients with cardiovascular disease, as well as to those with sleep apnoea.
“What this analysis says is that this treatment works early – so why wait?”
Dr Louis J Aronne, director of the Comprehensive Weight Control Center at Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, who led the first head-to-head trial of Mounjaro against Wegovy, said he expected even more innovations.
“I think we’re going to see more medications,” he told the congress. “I call it the golden age of obesity treatment.”
Dr Sonya Babu-Narayan, clinical director at the British Heart Foundation and a consultant cardiologist, said: “A generation ago, effective drugs for obesity would have been a pipe dream. Yet here we are with the potential to make a massive dent in the number of lives cut too short by cardiovascular disease and other conditions such as dementia and cancer. There is cause for optimism, as this will help more people live in good health for longer, and able to work for as long they want to.”
John Deanfield, professor of cardiology at University College London, said it was “an exciting new world”, where these drugs could play a big role in treating lots of diseases, not solely obesity, and that the volume of new medications being developed was previously unheard of.
“There will be a tsunami of trials,” he said. “There’s 150 drugs currently being developed or in trials. That’s a scenario we have never seen before in healthcare or medicine.”
They include retatrutide, where patients in the trial lost up to 24% of their body weight in less than a year. Manufacturer Lilly expects to report the first phase 3 results by the end of this year.
Meanwhile, the NHS is about to start prescribing Mounjaro. The NHS medical director for primary care, Dr Claire Fuller, said: “From next month, some eligible patients will be able to access the weight loss drug Mounjaro for the first time. The drug has already been approved for use for some adults in specialist weight management services, and 220,000 people will be eligible to benefit over the first three years.
“This phased rollout will ensure those with the greatest clinical need can access the treatment as a priority, at the same time as the NHS develops new and innovative services through which other weight loss treatments can also be delivered in the future. ”
But obesity experts urged the government to go faster and to include weight loss jabs in the government’s 10-year plan for health.
Prof Jason Halford of the European Association for the Study of Obesity said: “If the government and NHS are serious about prevention they need to reconsider their position on the speed of the rollout of these drugs.”
Deanfield said: “These drugs should play a big part in the government’s prevention agenda. The GLP-1 drugs provide a real opportunity to delay many of these diseases of ageing all at the same time.
“I would hope it wouldn’t take 10 years to do something that is so needed and so obviously transformative,” he added.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “Obesity costs lives, and burdens the economy as well as the NHS. Obesity drugs can be gamechangers in tackling this problem, but we must recognise these drugs are not a replacement for a good diet and exercise.
“As the government shifts the NHS from sickness to prevention, we will be looking at how obesity drugs can be made available to more people, while securing a good price for the taxpayer.”
