Should we use GLP-1 drugs to treat obesity in children? — SkimNews
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- Babak Orandi at NYU found 9.3% of US children aged 8–11 with obesity but no diabetes are now prescribed GLP-1 drugs, up from 0.03% in 2019, with off-label use more common among wealthier families facing costs of hundreds of dollars a month.
- Novo Nordisk reported that 40% of children aged 6–12 with severe obesity who received weekly Wegovy injections over a 68-week clinical trial were no longer classified as obese.
- GLP-1 drugs are approved only for ages 12 and older in the UK, US and Australia, but are being prescribed off-label to children as young as 8 in the US under American Academy of Pediatrics guidance.
- Danielle Longmore at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute warned that reduced food intake from the drugs raises the risk of iron and other nutrient deficiencies, and that their impact on bone strength, growth, puberty timing, and future pregnancy and menopause is unknown.
- The case for treating: severe obesity before age 4 has been estimated to cut life expectancy by up to 42 years, and a growing view among healthcare practitioners is that withholding the drugs is riskier than prescribing them given links to depression, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and liver disease.
- Children typically regain weight after stopping the drugs, as adults do, prompting experts like Longmore to caution that the medications are 'not going to be the easy way out' and that underlying drivers of obesity must still be addressed.
Why it matters: Children with severe obesity face life-shortening complications — early-onset disease can cut life expectancy by up to 42 years — but treating them with GLP-1s means dosing bodies still growing and entering puberty with no data yet on bone density, development, or pregnancy decades later. Off-label prescribing is currently driven by families who can afford hundreds of dollars a month, creating an access divide before regulators have approved the drugs for this age group.
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