Half of Wegovy users stop treatment within first year

Nearly half of Danish patients prescribed the weight loss medicine Wegovy stop treatment within the first year, according to a study from Aarhus University reported by DR. Researchers say cost and side effects are the main reasons.

The study examined 157,822 people who started taking Wegovy between December 2022 and November 2024. In total, 49 percent stopped treatment within a year. Those who stopped were slightly more likely to be men, younger people and people on lower incomes.

“It is a relatively large number of people who stop after a shorter period,” said Reimar W. Thomsen, a professor and senior consultant at Aarhus University Hospital and one of the study’s researchers.

Wegovy was introduced in Denmark in December 2022, and nearly 300,000 people have used the medicine since then. Thomsen said many patients have unrealistic expectations that Wegovy can simply kick-start a diet before they continue losing weight without treatment.

“We have strong evidence that when people stop taking the medicine, their appetite returns very strongly and they gain weight. It is almost impossible to fight against,” he said.

According to Thomsen, around 90 percent regain most of the weight they lost after a few years. Repeated weight loss and gain may also pose a health risk because people can end up gaining more fat mass than the muscle mass they lost, resulting in a less healthy body composition.

General practitioner Thomas Voss, whose clinic is in Låsby between Aarhus and Silkeborg, prescribes Wegovy to about 5 percent of his patients. He said the clinic works to ensure patients understand that the treatment is not intended as a temporary cure.

“If you use it as a diet, it works just as poorly as a diet,” Voss said. He added that the clinic tries to identify patients with unrealistic expectations and informs them about the medicine’s effects, cost and side effects.

Researcher calls for lower price

The researchers found that people with lower incomes were more likely to stop treatment. Thomsen said it was concerning if financial circumstances were a significant reason for stopping.

“It seems unfair to me as a doctor that those who need treatment the most cannot receive it because they cannot afford it,” he said. Thomsen urged Novo Nordisk to lower the price so that more patients who need the medicine can access it.

The study was peer-reviewed and published in JAMA Network Open, a medical journal under the American Medical Association.

Novo Nordisk declined an interview and did not say whether the price of Wegovy would be reduced. In a written response, the company said it wanted people living with severe obesity in Denmark to receive public subsidies for Wegovy to make treatment more accessible.

The company also said severe obesity was complex and that no single solution suited everyone. It said weight loss treatment should be planned individually with a healthcare professional and could combine medication, physical activity, diet and guidance.