Patients hate ‘forever’ drugs, but Wegovy seems different

Many seem likely to keep taking weight-loss drugs

Most people, study after study shows, don’t take the medicines prescribed for them. It doesn’t matter what they are: statins, high blood pressure drugs, drugs to lower blood sugar, asthma drugs. Either patients never start taking them, or they stop.

It’s a problem that doctors call nonadherence — the common human tendency to resist medical treatment — and it leads to countless deaths and billions of dollars of preventable medical costs each year.

But that resistance may be overcome by the obesity drugs Wegovy and Zepbound, which have astounded the world with the way they help people lose weight and keep it off. Though it’s still early, and there is a paucity of data on compliance with the new drugs, doctors say they are noticing another effect: Patients seem to take them faithfully, week in and week out.

Some patients may have to get over an initial reluctance to start. A national survey showed that when people were told they would gain weight back if they stopped taking the drugs, most lost interest in starting them.

In one small study, patients stopped refilling prescriptions for months at a time, perhaps because of side effects, lack of availability, or insurance and cost issues.

But anecdotally, doctors and patients say, those who begin taking the drugs are continuing.

“I don’t intend to ever stop taking this medicine,” Kimberly DelRosso of Pembroke said of Wegovy.

She has never forgotten to take her weekly injection. By contrast, she said, she often neglected to take the blood pressure pills she was prescribed when she weighed more. (Now, after losing weight with Wegovy, she no longer needs them.)

So far, doctors report that like DelRosso, most of their patients intend to take the obesity drugs forever, and many are thrilled when they stop needing other drugs.

Dr. David Cummings, the director of a weight management program at the VA Puget Sound Health Care System, records his patients’ experiences with Wegovy and the diabetes drug Ozempic. So far he has prescribed the drugs to about 1,000 patients. At most, 5 percent stopped because of side effects, he said. Others stopped because their insurance no longer covered their drug or because they couldn’t find a pharmacy that had it in stock, reflecting persistent shortages of the drugs.

But those who stop generally do not do so voluntarily, he said. Other doctors who prescribe Wegovy agreed.

“Compliance is exceptional,” said Dr. Diana Thiara, medical director of the weight management program at the University of California San Francisco. “People take it. They ask for refills. They take it on trips.”

There’s a price to pay for neglecting to take prescription drugs. An astonishing 40 to 50 percent of people who are prescribed medicines for chronic conditions like high blood pressure fail to take them — and incur at least $100 billion in preventable medical costs annually as a result. This lack of compliance is estimated to lead to at least 100,000 preventable deaths each year.

Even a heart attack may not be enough to scare people into taking the current arsenal of cardiac drugs, shown to reduce heart disease deaths.