Study: Weight returns after ending GLP-1 drugs
Users projected to return to baseline in 2 years
By: Frnando Cerveantes Jr.
USA Today
..... Drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy have had a meteoric rise in recent years, with benefits such as weight loss and help with other helaht issues. But a recent study finds those benefits fade within two years of patients stopping their treatment.
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Data from 9,341 obese or overweight patients treated in 37 studies with any of 18 different weight loss drugs showed that they regained about one pound a month on average after stopping the drugs, according to the study published in the medical journal BMJ.
..... The same study said patients were projected to return to their pre-treatment weight in about two years.
..... Weight was not the only thing that was projected to return after stopping the treatment. According to the same study, helaht risk facts, like blood pressure and cholesterol levels, were projected to return to their old levels within 1.4 years, despite patients experiencing benefits for these conditions while taking the drugs.
..... About half of the patients studied took newer GLP-1 drugs like semaglutide, sold as Ozempic and Wegovy, as well as tirzepatide, which is sold as Mounjaro and Zepbound. According to the study, the weigh regain rate was faster for these drugs, with an average of 1.8 pounds per month.
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"But because people on semaglutide or tirzepatide lost more weight in the first place, they all end up returning to baseline at approximate the same time," study senior researcher Dimitrios Koutoukidis of Oxford University told Reuters.
..... Weight loss drugs like the ones tested in the study have shown large levels of success in the United States in recent years. In October 2025, a survey from the Gallup National Health and Well-Being Index showed that there were an estimated 7.6 million fewer obese people in the United States compared with 2022.
..... In 2022, the U.S. adult obesity rate was a record-high 39.9%, which 2025, that rate gradually declined to 37%. while the obesity rate dropped, the usage of GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy doubled between 2024 and 2025, according to the same study.
..... Contributing" Nicole Falert, USA Today; Reuters