Doctors prescribe too much Wegovy, Danish GP leader says

Too many patients are being prescribed Wegovy, and general practitioners need to improve their advice about the weight-loss drug’s effects and side effects, Maria Krüger, chair of the Danish Society for General Medicine, told DR.

Her comments follow a new study from Aarhus University showing that 49 percent of Wegovy users stopped taking the drug before completing a year of treatment.

The study examined health records for 157,822 people in Denmark who started taking Wegovy between December 2022 and November 2024. All were followed for 18 months.

Among those who stopped treatment within a year, men, younger people and people with lower incomes were slightly overrepresented. The peer-reviewed study has been published in JAMA Network Open, a medical journal operated by the American Medical Association.

The findings raise questions about whether doctors are doing enough to explain that lost weight may return after patients stop taking Wegovy.

“We know, unfortunately, that many people have not discussed with their doctor how long they actually need to stay on the treatment. Many have the idea that they just need to start treatment, and that it does not have to last for very many months,” said Reimar W. Thomsen, one of the study’s researchers.

“But all we know is that this treatment should actually be taken for a long time, perhaps for life, if the weight is to be kept down. We can hear that many patients have not discussed this with their doctor when they start treatment.”

Krüger said she recognised the pattern of patients stopping Wegovy sooner than they should.

“We can certainly do better,” she said. But in her experience since Wegovy came onto the market three years ago, many patients have had unrealistic expectations about what the drug can do and viewed it as a quick start to weight loss.

“No matter how much you try to explain that people gain weight again if they stop, I think it can be difficult to convince patients,” Krüger said.

Krüger, who is also a general practitioner in Frederiksberg in Copenhagen, said she personally believed that GPs were issuing too many Wegovy prescriptions.

“I can see that very many people are being prescribed it, including many who are not severely overweight or facing significant health risks,” she said. “Overall, we are prescribing far too much weight-loss medication.”

However, refusing to prescribe the drug may lead patients to seek it elsewhere, Krüger said. They can use online clinics, order it over the internet or obtain it on the black market, she said.

“In any case, it is medication that people have access to. I would rather be involved in a treatment in some way, so that I can help and support the patient,” she said.