14 Percent of U.S. Adults Initiate GLP-1 Receptor Agonist After Bariatric Surgery

WEDNESDAY, Sept. 3, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Fourteen percent of individuals initiate glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 RAs) after bariatric surgery, according to a study published online Aug. 27 in JAMA Surgery.

Minji Kim, Pharm.D., from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, and colleagues characterized the use of and factors associated with GLP-1 RA initiation among U.S. adults undergoing bariatric surgery in a retrospective cohort study. Electronic health records were obtained from about 113 million U.S. adults.

The researchers found that 14.0 percent of the 112,858 individuals undergoing bariatric surgery initiated GLP-1 RAs after surgery, with 21.5 percent beginning within two years of surgery and the remainder initiating during postsurgical years 3 to 4, 5 to 6, or beyond (32.3, 25.2, and 21.0 percent, respectively). Compared with their counterparts, female patients, those undergoing sleeve gastrectomy, and those with type 2 diabetes were more likely to initiate GLP-1 RAs (adjusted hazard ratios, 1.61, 1.42, and 1.34, respectively). There was an 8 percent increase in the likelihood of GLP-1 RA initiation with each one-unit increase in postsurgical body mass index (BMI; adjusted hazard ratio, 1.08).

“These findings raise important questions for future obesity research,” senior study author Hemalkumar Mehta, Ph.D., also from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said in a statement. “For example, what is the optimal clinical threshold for prescribing a GLP-1 in terms of timing and the patient’s relative weight after bariatric surgery?”

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