A recent study indicates that the number of individuals without diabetes but classified as overweight or obese who initiated treatment with glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1RA) in the US has surged, from approximately 21,000 in 2019 to over 174,000 by 2023—representing an increase of more than 700%.1

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, in collaboration with Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, analyzed data through TriNetX, a network containing health information on 45 million anonymized patients, to examine the year-by-year patterns of new GLP-1RA prescriptions across the US from 2011 to 2023.

Over the 12-year span, they observed that 871,854 individuals had been prescribed a GLP-1RA. The demographic data showed that these users were predominantly female (59.6%) and...