Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2016 Sep;24(9):1955-61.
doi: 10.1002/oby.21533.

Low adoption of weight loss medications: A comparison of prescribing patterns of antiobesity pharmacotherapies and SGLT2s

Catherine E Thomas  1 , Elizabeth A Mauer  2 , Alpana P Shukla  1 , Samrat Rathi  3 , Louis J Aronne  1
Affiliations

Low adoption of weight loss medications: A comparison of prescribing patterns of antiobesity pharmacotherapies and SGLT2s

Catherine E Thomas et al. Obesity (Silver Spring). 2016 Sep.

Abstract

Objective: To characterize the adoption of antiobesity pharmacotherapies, as compared with that of the newest antidiabetes pharmacotherapy, subtype 2 sodium-glucose transport protein inhibitors (SGLT2s), among prescribers in the United States.

Methods: A retrospective analysis of 2012 to 2015 data extracted from the IMS Health National Prescription Audit™ and Xponent™ assessed adoption rates of antiobesity pharmacotherapies and SGLT2s.

Results: The number of dispensed antidiabetes prescriptions was 15 times the number of dispensed antiobesity prescriptions. The antiobesity market share was: 74.0% phentermine, 18.6% new antiobesity pharmacotherapies. The mean increase in prescriptions/month were: 25,259 for SGLT2s, 5,154 for new antiobesity pharmacotherapies, and 2,718 for phentermine. Medical specialties prescribing the majority of the analysis medications were Family Medicine/General Practice and Internal Medicine. Endocrinology had the highest prevalence of prescribers of any subspecialty.

Conclusions: The adoption rate of SGLT2s was nearly exponential, while the adoption rate of new antiobesity pharmacotherapies was linear. Considering the relative prevalence of obesity to diabetes and that obesity is a major cause of diabetes, these results are paradoxical and suggest systematic barriers against the prescribing of antiobesity pharmacotherapies. The under-prescribing of antiobesity pharmacotherapies is widely acknowledged, but this is the first prescription data of these new medications to demonstrate its extent in the United States.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Prevalence of obesity and diabetes and pharmacotherapy utilization of antiobesity pharmacotherapies and antidiabetes pharmacotherapies. [Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com.]
Figure 2
Figure 2
Volumes of dispensed prescriptions of all antiobesity pharmacotherapies, all antidiabetes pharmacotherapies (excluding insulin), and SGLT2s. [Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com.]
Figure 3
Figure 3
Volumes of dispensed prescriptions of phentermine, new antiobesity pharmacotherapies, and SGLT2s. [Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com.]
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment in

References

    1. Ogden CL, Carroll MD, Kit BK, Flegal KM. Prevalence of childhood and adult obesity in the United States, 2011–2012. JAMA. 2014;311:806–814. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Eckel RH, Grundy SM, Zimmet PZ. The metabolic syndrome. Lancet. 2005;365:1415–1428. - PubMed
    1. Samaranayake NR, Ong KL, Leung RY, Cheung BM. Management of obesity in the NHANES, 2007–2008. Ann Epidemiol. 2012;22:349–353. - PubMed
    1. Xia Y, Kelton CM, Guo JJ, Bian B, Heaton PC. Treatment of obesity: Pharmacotherapy trends in the United States from 1999 to 2010. Obesity (Silver Spring) 2015;23:1721–1728. - PubMed
    1. National Center for Health Statistics. Health, United States, 2014. Hyattsville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; 2015. p. 165.

MeSH terms

LinkOut - more resources