GLP-1 drugs like Wegovy are all the rage—but people are quitting them too fast to achieve meaningful weight loss, finds 170,000-patient study

As recently as the onset of COVID-19 four years ago, you probably didn’t know what a glucagon-like peptide 1 agonist, or GLP-1 drug, was. But this class of medications, which help people with Type 2 diabetes and obesity lower their blood sugar and promote weight loss, is now a household name.

“It’s everywhere,” Dr. Razia Hashmi, Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (BCBSA) vice president of clinical affairs, said Tuesday during a town hall at Fortune’s Brainstorm Health conference in Dana Point, Calif. “It’s part of our conversation. It’s on social media, your family’s talking about it, we’re talking about it in the boardroom, we’re talking about it in the break room. There is, obviously, a lot of excitement about it—the adoption’s been exponential—but there is so much more to learn.”

Not all of it is positive, as revealed by a new study conducted by Blue Health Intelligence that examined nearly 170,000 GLP-1 users who were prescribed the medication for weight loss. Released Tuesday, it’s “the largest-ever study done, real-world evidence study” of the medication, Hashmi........

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