Weight Loss Drugs for Kids: A ‘Minefield of Health and Emotional Problems,’ Researchers Warn
A group of researchers at the University of California, Irvine, said young people’s exposure to weight loss drugs on social media, combined with teens’ proclivities toward risk-taking and the coming availability of the drugs in oral form will “create a perfect storm” for potential abuse.
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The use of popular weight loss drugs to treat childhood obesity may have serious unintended negative consequences for children, according to a group of researchers at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), UCI News reported.
In an article, which will be published in the Journal of Clinical and Translational Science, the researchers outlined the likely dangers of more widespread use among children of glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1RAs) — the drug class that includes blockbuster drugs Wegovy and Ozempic, among others.
The researchers warned against the unknown effects of prescribing the drugs to children, given the “dearth of research” on these drugs in children and adolescents and the likelihood that the drugs would be prescribed for long-term use.
The article includes a call to action for better research on the drugs’ effects on the pediatric population and oversight to mitigate threats to pediatric health.
High-profile research touting the success of the injectable drugs for treating childhood diabetes and promoting weight loss, along with the likelihood that the drugs will soon be available in oral form, makes it “inevitable” that more children and adolescents will be taking them, according to the UCI researchers.
Doctors will be more likely to prescribe the drugs, particularly among populations with high obesity and low fitness levels, and more children and teens may find ways to access and abuse the drugs on their own.
Children, they wrote, need energy for physical activity, like adults. But they also need extra energy from their diet for growth and development. Any change in the balance of caloric intake and energy expenditure, which the drugs may easily cause, could adversely affect children’s health later in life.
For example, an energy intake-to-expenditure imbalance could cause insufficient bone mineralization in youth which could lead to osteoporosis and fractures later in life. Lack of necessary caloric intake could also adversely impact metabolism, causing harmful growth patterns and inflammation, the researchers said.
The researchers found children already know about these drugs from social media. That knowledge, along with teens’ proclivities toward risk-taking, and the availability of the drugs in oral form will “create a perfect storm” for potential abuse.
“With the increase in social media, young people are already exposed to a diet culture and body images which may not be attainable and, ultimately, unhealthy,” said Jan D. Hirsch, Ph.D., article co-author and dean of the UCI School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. “These drugs administered without proper supervision could cause a minefield of health and emotional problems for children as they age.”
The risks are particularly high among youth with eating disorders or body image issues, or youth who participate in weight-sensitive sports such as gymnastics or wrestling, they added.
The paradigm for addressing weight issues through medication, they wrote, is indicative of:
“the increasing medicalization of pediatric conditions … many of which result from environmental and societal rather than biological mechanisms, and the lack of progress in particular made in addressing the environmental and lifestyle issues that have contributed immeasurably to the childhood obesity epidemic.”
The researchers raised concerns about the lack of studies the drugs have undergone in pediatric populations. “Children are not miniature adults and as newer formulations emerge it cannot be assumed that pharmacokinetics [how a drug moves through the body] or adverse effects in adults are the same in children or adolescents,” they wrote.
and Emma Cooper
They raised concerns about dosage, lifelong reliance on the drugs and other lifestyle interventions that may be necessary for children.
Other known side effects not mentioned in the article include pancreatitis, thyroid cancer, gallbladder swelling, renal failure, diabetic retinopathy and suicidal thoughts.
The drugs also carry serious and under-discussed risks for pregnant women, and experts have raised concerns about the use of the drugs by young women of childbearing age.
The authors concluded that given the “inevitable” overuse and abuse of these drugs among pediatric populations a network of academic centers called “Clinical and Translational Science Award Hubs” ought to take up the responsibility of mitigating the problem.
These hubs ought to build multidisciplinary teams to study the effects of these drugs on children and adolescents, use real-world data to identify where the drugs are most likely to be used, and update recommendations for lifestyle interventions, they suggested.
No mention of the AAP Guidelines
The paper did not mention another key driver of increasing prescriptions for weight-loss drugs among kids and teens — the new clinical guidelines for treating childhood obesity issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) earlier this year.
The AAP issued the guidelines in January, recommending weight loss drugs for obese children as young as 8 and consultation for bariatric surgery for children with severe obesity as young as 13.
The AAP issued the new recommendations less than a month after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Wegovy as a treatment for teenagers with obesity.
There are no long-term studies on the effects of the drugs in adults or teens.
The authors of the guidelines maintain their support for them. Lead guideline author Sarah Hampl recently told STAT News the guidelines urgently needed to be updated and, “We feel that this was a good continuation of previous work that had been done and reflected the latest state of the evidence, which, as we all know, is evolving rapidly.”
But when the guidelines were released, experts told The Defender they were “shocked” by the recommendations. They said the focus on drugs and surgery would have devastating adverse effects for children but would make big profits for Big Pharma.
Mary Lou Singleton, a midwife and family nurse practitioner, told The Defender the new AAP guidelines “offered no meaningful analysis or explanation of what is driving the childhood obesity epidemic.”
Dr. Michelle Perro, a pediatrician, executive director of GMO Science and author of “What’s Making Our Children Sick?: How Industrial Food Is Causing an Epidemic of Chronic Illness, and What Parents (and Doctors) Can Do About It,” added:
“Unless we remove the pesticides and other toxicants, the promotion of drugs and surgery are panaceas, bandaids, and foster the ‘pill for ill’ model, rather than root-cause real solutions.”
Experts in obesity medicine, nutrition, eating disorders and sociology, have also criticized the guidelines. They say the guidelines focus on weight instead of health, that they lack clarity about who the recommendations are for, they rely on limited data, and they downplay the long-term implications of drug treatment and surgery, STAT News reported.
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