New data seems to show that GLP-1 medications like semaglutide, the active ingredient in popular drugs Ozempic and Wegovy, are working on a population-wide level. Last late week, health analytics organization EPIC Research released two data trackers looking at the medical records of people across the country. The prescription rate of GLP-1 drugs in the U.S. has skyrocketed in recent years, the data shows, coinciding with a modest but sustained drop in the obesity rate. Though it’s still too early to tell, the long-term and widespread use of GLP-1s could finally start to help turn the tide against obesity. As one rises, one falls Epic Systems produces software used by health care systems across the world to create and maintain electronic medical records. COSMOS is a dataset created in collaboration with many of these systems, covering over 300 million patient records from thousands of hospitals and clinics in the U.S. and other countries. The company’s offshoot, EPIC Research, has started to use COSMOS data to keep an eye on many nationwide health trends, such as the seasonal rate of infectious diseases like norovirus or the adoption of GLP-1s. These latest trackers are now able to see how many Americans within COSMOS are being prescribed GLP-1s, along with their body mass index, on a quarterly basis. And it appears things have significantly changed on both ends over time.