Few Adolescents With Obesity Prescribed Obesity Medications

FRIDAY, June 13, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Despite an increase in the prevalence of prescribing, only 0.5 percent of U.S. adolescents with obesity were prescribed an obesity medication in 2023, according to research published in the June 5 issue of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Using ambulatory electronic medical record data, Lyudmyla Kompaniyets, Ph.D., from the CDC in Atlanta, and colleagues examined trends in the proportion of U.S. adolescents aged 12 to 17 years with obesity who were prescribed U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved obesity medications during 2018 to 2023.

The researchers observed a substantial increase in the proportion of U.S. adolescents who were prescribed obesity medication in 2023 (by about 300 percent compared with 2020), the year after expansion of FDA approval of two obesity medications to include adolescents. In 2023, 0.5 percent of adolescents with obesity were prescribed an obesity medication, with 83 percent of prescriptions being received by adolescents with severe obesity. The most commonly prescribed medications were semaglutide, followed by phentermine or phentermine-topiramate. Higher prevalence of prescribing was seen among girls than boys (adjusted prevalence ratio [aPR], 2.05), adolescents aged 15 to 17 versus 12 to 14 years (aPR, 2.24), and among those with class 2 or 3 versus class 1 obesity (aPRs, 4.03 and 12.78, respectively). Lower prescribing prevalence was seen for Black or African American adolescents versus White adolescents (aPR, 0.61).

“The findings in this report indicate that health care providers tended to prescribe obesity medications to adolescents with severe obesity,” the authors write.

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