Doctors are growing increasingly concerned that weight-loss drugs are driving new cases of anorexia, and that few safeguards are in place to protect patients with eating disorders. Tens of millions of patients now take these medications, which can sometimes cause symptoms that mirror the effects of anorexia: hair loss, dizziness, gastrointestinal issues, extreme calorie deficits.
"At that point, it’s like, is that anorexia? Is that disordered eating? Or is that just a side effect of the medication?" said Dr. Katherine Kiley, a family and sports medicine physician in Long Beach, Calif. Citing an "urgent need" for guidance, an international coalition of obesity medicine specialists, eating disorder clinicians and other experts released new recommendations last month on GLP-1 prescribing and eating disorders. Among their ideas for physicians: Screen all patients for signs of eating disorders before starting a GLP-1, and routinely monitor anyone on the drugs for them. Neither of those are standard practice now. Nor are most doctors trained to recognize the signs of disordered eating, which may limit the reach of the new recommendations.
Further complicating matters is that many people get the drugs through telehealth services, with little to no oversight from a physician. In a recent study, researchers who tried purchasing weight-loss drugs from 49 websites found that only about one-third required direct interaction with a clinician before prescribing the medications, and only around half asked about eating disorders.
"We have started to prescribe a really, really serious drug, when we don’t entirely know all of the impacts it will have," said Vanessa Longley, chief executive of Beat, a British nonprofit that runs a help line for people with eating disorders. There is little data on how common anorexia is among people on weight-loss drugs. But a recent study that examined GLP-1 use among people with no apparent medical need found that the frequency of eating disorders in this group was six times as high as that of the general population.
Source: New York Times Top Stories · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing