The Summary
- Obesity dipped slightly in U.S. adults last year for the first time in more than a decade, a study found.
- The researchers suggested that might be due, in part, to the rise of weight loss drugs like Ozempic.
- However, other medications or factors such as the effects of the Covid pandemic could also have played a role.
According to study, obesity among American adults decreased somewhat last year, marking the first decline in the nation’s obesity rate in almost ten years. The authors of the study speculate that the recent surge in popular weight-loss medications like Ozempic may be partly to blame.
The South saw the worst decline, especially among women and individuals aged 66 to 75, according to the results, which were released Friday in the journal JAMA Health Forum.
From 2013 to 2023, the study examined body mass index measurements of over 16.7 million adults from various geographic regions, age groups, sexes, races, and ethnicities. Electronic health records were used to collect BMI values, a common but constrained method of estimating obesity as a ratio of weight to height.
The frequency of adult obesity in the United States dropped from 46% in 2022 to 45.6% in 2023, according to the study. (Those percentages are marginally higher than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s prediction, which states that approximately 40% of American adults were obese in 2021–2023.)
According to Benjamin Rader, a computational epidemiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and one of the study’s authors, the findings varied depending on the demographics and geographical areas.
According to him, obesity was declining in the United States overall, with the South leading the way, but not in all areas. While Asian Americans experienced a rise in obesity, Black Americans also had significant declines.
According to Rader, the researchers’ study of insurance claims revealed that the South had the largest recorded per-capita uptake of weight loss medications, making the decline there noteworthy. However, he admitted that more research is necessary to rule out any potential connection.
The authors of the study also pointed out that the total results may have been impacted by the disproportionately high incidence of Covid-19 deaths among obese individuals in the South.
The findings, according to Dr. Michael Weintraub, an endocrinologist and clinical assistant professor at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine, were consistent with recent CDC data that indicated a minor decline in the prevalence of adult obesity in the United States during the 2021–2023 period when compared to the years 2017–2020 (although severe obesity increased during that time).
According to Weintraub, who was not involved in the new study, “I find the data exciting, and with the prospect that we could be at the precipice of a shift in this obesity epidemic.” But I hesitate to call this down-trending value in 2023 yet a trend.
Experts stated that more studies over longer time periods are required to assess the new medications’ actual effects, even if weight reduction pills played a significant role in the decrease in obesity.
Dr. Tannaz Moin, an endocrinologist and associate professor of medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved in the study, stated, “We need a couple more years to see if this is truly a trend or if it’s just a little blip and things will go back to where they were, or if it will get even worse.”
Additionally, Moin noted that the new study solely examined the distribution of GLP-1 weight reduction medications, which includes Mounjaro and Ozempic. By lowering a person’s appetite and food consumption, this kind of medicine is used to treat diabetes and obesity. A hormone that might make someone feel full is mimicked by the medications.
However, according to Moin, a more thorough analysis of various medications could better catch any shifts in patterns, as GLP-1 drugs are merely a subset of prescriptions used to treat obesity. Additionally, the cost of weight reduction medications may distort data regarding who can afford the treatment.
Additionally, because the study used insurance claims data, it’s possible that the results did not include persons who were uninsured or who paid cash for weight loss medications.
Moin stated that she was taken aback by the decline in BMI seen in the elderly.
Since many of them would be in the Medicare age bracket, it isn’t the population that I would generally assume uses the most GLP-1 medications, she said, adding that it can be challenging for those on Medicare to get weight loss medications. A rule recently proposed by the Biden administration would mandate that Medicare and Medicaid pay for weight-loss drugs for those seeking treatment for obesity.
Conversely, Weintraub issued a warning that short-term drops do not necessarily portend a longer-term one.
He claimed that previous variations in the prevalence of obesity had deceived us. In the early 2000s, the CDC reported declining rates of childhood obesity, which delighted us. However, in the years that followed, these rates skyrocketed.
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