Warning as appetite-suppressing injections set to be approved in Britain in pill form which will lead to them becoming cheaper and more widely available
The rising in popularity of weight loss drugs will be supercharged in 2026 which poses big questions about how users should cope if they have to stop taking them.
Forecasts suggest more Brits are willing to risk the common side effects of nausea and sickness in the hope it can be managed and they can experience the dramatic weight loss these drugs can bring about.
This year the second wave of these drugs will be approved in pill form, meaning people can switch from having to inject themselves once a week to popping a daily tablet. Pills are also cheaper to store and manufacture so they are eventually expected to become much cheaper than the jabs.
There should now be a major public debate about how users’ manage life on the drugs – especially if they have to stop taking them.
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Weekly injections such as Mounjaro, Ozempic and Wegovy slow digestion and reduce appetite by mimicking a hormone called glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) which regulates hunger and feelings of fullness.
As with many common drugs, they come with a small risk of serious side effects. However, for most people the risk of remaining dangerously overweight carries a much bigger risk to their long term health, through conditions such as cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes and cancer.
Over three million people are likely to take appetite-suppressing drugs in the new year including one in ten people aged 25 to 49-year-olds. This would be an increase from an estimated 1-1.5 million people taking the drugs now.
By comparison, eight million people take statins, mainly to lower levels of “bad” cholesterol. They are one of the UK’s most commonly prescribed medicines, costing around 4p per tablet, and are now in many ways a preventative medicine.
The vast majority of people taking weight loss drugs will have to pay to get them privately as the NHS has not yet built up the support service capacity to prescribe them to everyone it believes could benefit from them. There are 15 million obese adults in the UK.
That is because users’ need personalised clinical support and counselling to help users transform diet and lifestyle habits that have often become ingrained over decades, even from early childhood.
Landmark research presented at the European Congress on Obesity I attended in Malaga last year outlined why relying on these drugs is a big problem. Oxford University experts analysed 11 trials of GLP-1 drugs and proved that people pile all the weight back on within a year of stopping taking them.
Many patients give up the treatment either because they are buying it privately so can no longer afford it, because they decide the side effects such as vomiting are too much, or because they are not losing weight anymore.
Another study has shown people lose fat and muscle mass on the drugs, but when they stop taking them they regain the fat but not the muscle.
Other research has suggested some patients could come off the drugs if they taper down the dose with specialist support, but only after major changes to their diets and activity levels have been made and maintained.
At another conference I covered last year the top NHS doctor said weight loss jabs could one day be as transformative as statins and widely available.
Sir Stephen Powis, NHS England’s medical director, told the NHS Confed Expo conference in Manchester: “Obesity rates and all the health conditions associated with it, such as diabetes and heart attacks, are continuing to rise and without radical intervention obesity is estimated to cost the NHS approximately £11.4 billion every year. This financial burden is unsustainable for the NHS and wider economy.
“We have to turn the tide. We have to and will go further, and faster. In just a few years from now, some of today’s weight loss drugs will be available at much lower cost. This could completely transform access.”
UK regulators are expected to approve the first weight loss drug in tablet form in the coming months. The pill, called orforglipron, is made by the US pharma giant Eli Lilly and trial participants lost 12% of their body weight taking it. It will be the first of many.
As more come on to the market, and eventually off patent, they will become much cheaper. But it is vital we don’t see them as an effortless way to lose weight, because those lost pounds may just return to bite us on the bum.
At that same NHS conference I attended last June, England’s chief medical officer Sir Chris Whitty warned that the drugs should not divert the UK from tackling our junk food diets. The obesity crisis was being driven, he explained, in large part by junk food availability and relentless advertising. Manufacturers target poorer areas where more people are obese, tempting them towards unhealthy foods.
Professor Whitty warned: “These drugs are not the get out of jail card that says we don’t have to do the other social things. It is simply unacceptable to be advertising obviously obesogenic foods to young children on the basis that subsequently they might be able to have drugs and undo the damage, which will otherwise be lifelong.
“What we shouldn’t do is use it as an excuse, as a society, not to deal with what is a rising and very serious problem.”
