Few Adolescents With Obesity Prescribed Obesity Medications
FRIDAY, June 13, 2025 (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 medica...