What Unexpected Costs do GLP-1 Patients Face?

GLP-1 drugs continue to dominate the pharmaceutical landscape. The medication is popular for its weight loss applications, and major pharmaceutical companies continue to introduce new versions of these medications. In late March, FDA approved a high dose injectable version of Wegovy through its accelerated approval program. Around the same time, Novo Nordisk announced a new multi-month subscription program for Wegovy for telehealth providers.

Clearly, the drugs are still popular. However, new data collected by Phenomix and the Mayo Clinic suggests that patients seeking the drug may not be fully aware of how the medication works and what the side effects are.

Phenomix’s CEO Mark Bagnall spoke with Pharmaceutical Executive about this data and what the impact is on GLP-1 users.

Pharmaceutical Executive: What unexpected costs do GLP-1 patients face?
Mark Bagnall: People in the weight loss industry have always tended to focus in on total weight loss. “I lost 50 pounds.” That's great, but what we have not done a good job of, at least until fairly recently, is thinking about what that means in terms of body composition.

So, the side effect that is most troubling is loss of muscle mass, and it's troubling because all sorts of issues arise from loss of muscle mass. It is our muscles that are the greatest consumers of energy. So, less muscle mass, less basic metabolic utilization of fatty acids and glucose that circulate in our system. That's bad.

Also, for older folks, they really cannot afford to lose that muscle mass because risk of falls, fractures, etc, go up. One of the things that we now must think about is those other effects of GLP 1s.

One of the surveys we did suggests that patients are becoming aware of those, but that understanding of those risks is not universal. Those of us who are in the business owe it to patients to let them be fully aware that these risks exist. That’s not to say that these drugs haven't been quite remarkable in their effect, but we just need to understand better.