Healthcare providers in the US wrote more than 9mn prescriptions for Ozempic and similar weight loss and diabetes drugs in the final quarter of 2022, as demand soars for the blockbuster treatments.
Trilliant Health, a healthcare analytics group, said in a report on Wednesday the volume of prescriptions for GLP-1 weight loss drugs like Ozempic — approved by US regulators in 2017 to treat patients with type 2 diabetes — and Wegovy increased 300 per cent from the start of 2020 to the end of 2022.
In that period, “just over half of patients taking these medications have a history of type-2 diabetes or have an associated medical visit with their prescription”, the report said.