A new generation of appetite-suppressing drugs called GLP-1 agonists — which includes blockbuster brands Ozempic and Mounjaro — has become massively popular in recent years.
On Monday, the UN health agency issued its first guidelines on how such drugs could be used as a key tool for treating obesity in adults as a chronic, relapsing disease.
More than 3.7 million people died from illnesses related to being overweight or obese in 2022, according to WHO figures — more than top infectious killers malaria, tuberculosis and HIV combined.
The number of people living with obesity will double by 2030 unless decisive action is taken to stem the rise, the agency estimates.
“Obesity is a major global health challenge,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.
The new guidance, he said “recognises that obesity is a chronic disease that can be treated with comprehensive and lifelong care”.
“While medication alone won’t solve this global health crisis, GLP-1 therapies can help millions overcome obesity and reduce its associated harms.”
Not ‘a magic bullet’
The new guidelines are calling for GLP-1 therapies to be used by adults, excluding pregnant women, “for the long-term treatment of obesity”.
WHO highlighted that while the efficacy of the therapies in treating obesity was “evident”, more data was needed on efficacy and safety over longer periods.
The agency also stressed that the medication alone would not reverse the trend in obesity, which it recognised as a complex, chronic disease and a major driver of non-communicable diseases, including cardiovascular disease, type-2 diabetes and some types of cancer.
The new guidelines suggest the therapies could be coupled with “intensive behavioural interventions”, promoting healthy diet and physical activity, amid indications such shifts may enhance treatment outcomes.
The WHO also insisted on the importance of “creating healthier environments through robust population-level policies to promote health and prevent obesity”.
And it urged targeted screening of individuals at high risk, and ensuring access to lifelong, person-centred care.
“You can’t see these drugs as a magic bullet,” Jeremy Farrar, WHO Assistant Director-General in charge of health promotion, disease prevention and care, told AFP.
“But they’re clearly going to become a very important part of an integrated approach to obesity,” he said.
If countries get the combination right, “the impact on bringing down levels of the people who are obese, and the impact particularly on diabetes,… on cardiovascular and others, is going to be profound”.
Bending the trajectory
Francesca Celletti, a WHO senior advisor on obesity, agreed.
“There is a possibility that we can bend this epidemiological trajectory of obesity,” she told AFP.
Beyond the health impacts, the global economic cost of obesity is predicted to hit US$3 trillion annually by the end of this decade, WHO said.
“If we don’t somehow shift the curve, the pressure on health systems is actually going to be untenable,” Farrar warned.
The sky-high prices of GLP-1 drugs have raised concerns they will not be made available in poorer nations where they could save the most lives.
Diabetes patients, for whom the drugs were originally developed, have also experienced shortages.
In September, WHO added GLP-1s to its list of essential medicines in a bid to shore up access, calling for cheap generic versions to be made available for people in developing countries.
Farrar also highlighted the need to make the fruits of innovations in treating non-communicable diseases like obesity accessible to all.
If they are not made “more readily available in middle- and low-income countries”, he warned, “we are going to increase health inequity over the next generation”.