Danielle Griffin, a 38-year-old woman from New Mexico, had no problem getting the popular weight loss drugs Ozempic and Wegovy. She had a prescription, the pharmacy had them, and her health insurance covered most of the cost. But the hardest part for Danielle wasn’t getting the drugs—it was realizing that they didn’t really work for her.
Griffin has been on Wegovy for a year like obviously a long time and a half and lost 13 pounds, watching her diet, drinking plenty of water and exercising. I’ve done everything right, with nothing to show for it. It’s discouraging.”
What’s going on?
As the information concluded by ksl.com, in clinical trials, people lost an average of 15% to 22% of their body weight – up to 50 pounds or more – while taking Wegovy or Mounjaro to treat obesity. In those trials roughly 10 per cent to 15 per cent of patients, who are referred to as ‘non responders’, lost less than 5 per cent of their body weight.
Since then, millions of people have tried the drugs, and some obesity experts now say maybe 20 percent, or 1 in 5, won’t respond to the medications. Doctors warn eager patients not to expect one size fits all results from the obesity drug boom, and it’s a little-known consequence of that drug boom, they say.
“It’s basically about explaining that all the people respond differently to this because of their different capacity and formation,” said Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, obesity expert at Massachusetts General Hospital.
GLP-1 receptor agonists are the name for drugs that mimic a hormone in the body called glucagon-like peptide 1. Weight, after all, is determined by genetics, hormones, and the way in which the brain regulates energy, and a person can respond in very different ways to the drugs, Stanford said.
Certain common medications including antidepressants, steroids and contraceptives can prevent weight loss, or medical conditions such as sleep apnea can.
It’s a disease that starts in the brain, Stanford said. “It may not all be the same from patient to patient.”
Despite such cautions, the numbers on the scale do not budge, but poor patients are often very upset when they start getting their needles weekly.
