But this was mostly because they lost so much weight in the first place, according to the British researchers who conducted the largest and most up-to-date review of the subject.<\/p>\n
A new generation of appetite-suppressing, injectable drugs called GLP-1 agonists have become immensely popular in the last few years, transforming the treatment for obesity and diabetes in many countries.<\/p>\n
They have been found to help people lose between 15-20% of their body weight.<\/p>\n
“This all appears to be a good news story,” said Susan Jebb, a public health nutrition scientist at Oxford University and co-author of a new BMJ study.<\/p>\n
However, recent data has suggested that “around half of people discontinue these medications within a year,” she told a press conference.<\/p>\n
This might be because of common side effects such as nausea or the price — these drugs can cost over $1,000 a month in the U.S.<\/p>\n
So the researchers reviewed 37 studies looking at ceasing different weight-loss drugs, finding that participants regained around 0.4 kilograms a month.<\/p>\n
Six of the clinical trials involved semaglutide — the ingredient used in Novo Nordisk’s brands Ozempic and Wegovy — and tirzepatide, used for Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro and Zepbound.<\/p>\n
While taking these two drugs, the trial participants lost an average of nearly 15 kilograms.<\/p>\n
However, after stopping the medication, they regained 10 kilograms within a year, which was the longest follow-up period available for these relatively new drugs.<\/p>\n
The researchers projected that the participants would return to their original weight in 18 months.<\/p>\n
Measurements of heart health, including blood pressure and cholesterol levels, also returned to their original levels after 1.4 years.<\/p>\n
People who were instead put on programmes that included diet and exercise — but not drugs — lost significantly less weight. However, it took an average of four years for them to regain their lost kilos.<\/p>\n
This meant that people taking the drugs regained their weight four times faster.<\/p>\n
‘Starting point, not a cure’<\/p>\n
“Greater weight loss tends to result in faster weight regain,” lead study author Sam West of Oxford University explained.<\/p>\n
But separate analysis showed that weight gain was “consistently faster after medication, regardless of the amount of weight lost in the first place,” he added.<\/p>\n
This could be because people who have learned to eat more healthily and exercise more often continue to do so even as they regain weight.<\/p>\n
Jebb emphasized that GLP-1 drugs “are a really valuable tool in obesity treatment — but obesity is a chronic relapsing condition.”<\/p>\n
“One would expect that these treatments need to be continued for life, just in the same way as blood pressure medication,” Jebb said.<\/p>\n
If this was the case, it would impact how national health systems judge whether these drugs are cost-effective, the researchers emphasized.<\/p>\n
“This new data makes it clear they are a starting point, not a cure,” said Garron Dodd, a metabolic neuroscience researcher at the University of Melbourne not involved in the study.<\/p>\n
“Sustainable treatment will likely require combination approaches, longer-term strategies, and therapies that reshape how the brain interprets energy balance, not just how much people eat,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But this was mostly because they lost so much weight in the first place, according to the British…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":480654,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[134,524,111,139,69,241715],"class_list":["post-480653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-medication","tag-health","tag-medication","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-study-shows-how-fast-kilos-return-after-ending-weight-loss-drugs-vnexpress-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/480654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}