Childhood obesity prescriptions for GLP-1 drugs surge in the U.S.

Although the number of US children under age 12 with obesity being prescribed the weight loss drugs Saxenda, Wegovy, and Zepbound remains low, the number is 310 times higher in June 2026 than it was in 2019, when the drugs were initially prescribed, a new study shows.

Led by researchers at NYU Langone Health, the study showed that prescriptions for the weight-loss medications are less common for young children with obesity (ages 8 to 11) than for adolescents with obesity (ages 12 to 17), at 0.6 percent and 0.9 percent, respectively. An estimated 20 percent of children in the US have obesity, meaning their body mass index (BMI) is above the 95th percentile for children of similar age and sex, without having diabetes, a well-known complication of the disease.

Publishing in the journal Pediatrics online Sept. 4, the researchers found that the portion of children ages 8 to 11 with obesity and without diabetes, who were prescribed glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists, increased from 0.03 percent in 2019 to 9.3 percent in 2026, for a 310-fold increase within 7.5 years. During this timeframe, 20,282 children ages 8 to 11 have been prescribed GLP-1s.

Older children with obesity were more likely than younger children with obesity to be prescribed the medications, even though clinical guidelines allow for the use of the medications for obesity in children as young as 8 years old. Girls were more likely than boys to receive the prescriptions.

Most children prescribed GLP-1s had severe obesity (93.7 percent), meaning their BMI was substantially higher than almost all other children of the same age and gender. Most children prescribed GLP-1s experienced at least one illness tied to obesity (65.2 percent), such as high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and sleep apnea.

Our study offers the first national overview in young children of the use of GLP-1 drugs to fight the obesity epidemic in the United States and shows that while the absolute numbers of children under the age of 12 receiving GLP-1 treatment is still low, GLP-1 use is accelerating rapidly. The careful use of GLP-1s remains a valuable tool in confronting the obesity epidemic among young Americans." 

Babak J. Orandi, MD, PhD, lead investigator and obesity medicine specialist, associate professor in the Departments of Surgery and Medicine at NYU Grossman School of Medicine

Dr. Orandi said that GLP-1 drugs can be very effective at treating obesity and improving its metabolic complications, leading to weight loss, better blood sugar regulation, and appetite suppression. While parents may hesitate at the thought of prescribing these medications, there are long-term risks associated with not prescribing them in young children with obesity, including chronic diseases like diabetes, hypertension, and liver disease in early adulthood and middle age. According to the study, a quarter of young children with obesity who are prescribed GLP-1s were prediabetic and therefore at high risk of the most common disease linked to obesity.

Among the study's other findings was that many young children with obesity who lived in in upper-income communities were 55 percent more likely to be prescribed GLP-1 medications than those who did not. 

Study co-senior author Allan B. Massie, PhD, an associate professor in the Departments of Surgery and Population Health at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, said that already GLP-1 prescribing patterns show the beginnings of a growing divergence between those who do and those who do not have access to the medications.

"Physicians and health policy-makers alike have a responsibility to ensure, as use of GLP-1 medications continues to rise, that all young children with obesity who need these drugs have access to them and that these valuable and sometimes costly treatments become available to more than those who have access to health insurance and can afford to visit pediatric clinics," said Dr. Massie.

Dr. Orandi said that long-term monitoring of children prescribed GLP-1s is needed to ensure that the drugs remain safe and effective. Clinical trials involving the medications are already underway regarding children as young as 6 years old with obesity, which he said will inform and offer guidance to physicians, policy makers, and parents on the growing use of anti-obesity drugs.

For the study, the team used Epic Cosmos, a national dataset of the electronic health records of more than 300 million American patients. The dataset includes information from 2,067 hospitals and 47,100 health clinics that use Epic, the nation's largest vendor of electronic health record systems, which had no role in performing the study.