Pharmacists Warn That People With Eating Disorders Are Misusing Wegovy Prescriptions
More and more people are taking weight loss injectables like Wegovy and Mounjaro — and though the drugs are gaining credibility when used properly, pharmacy experts are worried that not everyone prescribed these drugs should have access to them.
As Women's Health and other news outlets report, the United Kingdom's National Pharmacy Association is raising concerns about people with histories of disordered eating being able to easily purchase weight loss jabs online.
In a letter to the UK's General Pharmaceutical Council, the NPA is urging tougher rules for the online sale of glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor/agonist (GLP-1) drugs, the class of fullness-mimicking medications that includes Wegovy and its popular diabetes sister drug Ozempic, among others in an increasingly crowded market.
Those rules would include longer consultations that take place between a real doctor and the patient seeking the medication that last at least 20 minutes — as opposed to the current state of online pharmacies dispensing GLP-1s, many of which only require a questionnaire.
"We are concerned that the current regulations allow some patients to inappropriately access weight-loss injections without proper consultation or examination of historical medical records," NPA chairman Nick Kaye wrote in the letter.
As it stands today, in many places, anyone of age can buy GLP-1 drugs from online pharmacies with little more than a few clicks and a credit card number.
Beyond concerns about sketchy e-retailers selling unregulated compounded versions of these drugs, the NPA's letter seems to suggest that people with eating disorders may lie or obfuscate on the questionnaires to get access to the drugs, or overlook their very real gastrointestinal side effects in search of a get-thin-quick jab.
"There’s nothing wrong with online services in principle, but it’s important the regulator takes this opportunity to make compulsory a full consultation before dispensing high-risk medication such as weight-loss injections," the NPA explained, "and ensure supply is [prioritized] for those in most clinical need, including those with type 2 diabetes."
This is, unfortunately, far from the first time that we've heard this kind of warning.
Last year, eating disorder specialists told CNN that GLP-1s' rising popularity seemed to be linked to a rise in eating disorders.
"We noticed clinically that we were getting more and more people into our clinical services that had been started on GLP-1 agonists and had experienced new onset or worsening eating disorder symptoms," Aaron Keshen, the codirector of the Nova Scotia Provincial Eating Disorder Service in Halifax, Canada, told the broadcaster.
As one of the coauthors of the very few studies looking into the way GLP-1s affect disordered eating, Keshen said in that 2024 interview with CNN that "more research needs to be done" to disentangle these intimately related subjects.
"Perhaps a degree of moderate weight loss is a healthy outcome for some individuals," the Canadian eating disorder specialist said, "but it’s never going to be a healthy outcome to achieve rapid weight loss due to excessive pathological dietary restriction."
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