Do you have to take Ozempic forever to keep the weight off?

During an appearance on the Rapid Response show, Ro co-founder and CEO Zach Reitano says early studies show GLP-1 users who take the medication every 10 to 14 days may still maintain their weight loss and health benefits. If confirmed, that could cut the cost of these drugs in half sometime in the near future.

Transcript

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GLP-1s are like a lifetime prescription, right? The benefits tend to dissipate after you stop the medication. What the data shows right now is that if a patient stops using the medication, the majority of patients, not everyone, but the vast majority of patients will typically regain the weight that they lost. Unfortunately, they also will lose the metabolic health benefits that they got. And those are actually lost even faster than the weight regain. Are the benefits linked to absolute perfection in terms of adherence? And what the early research is starting to show is that that's not the case. And that is really exciting, I think, for people. The studies are small. They're in groups of 10 people, 20, 30, 40, 50, but quite consistent and strong in the data, showing that if patients take it every 10 days or two weeks, that they're actually able to maintain their weight and the metabolic health benefits while taking basically half the medication. So that would cut the price in half. And so I think there's a lot left to learn, but I think that patients won't. It is likely that they won't be stuck between all or nothing.