Millions of people have used weight loss drugs such as Ozempic and Mounjaro in the past year — but a new study suggests that lifestyle benefits may not extend much further than the number on the scale.
Published in The BMJ, the study analysed 262 clinical trials involving around 100,000 participants and 19 different drugs.
The researchers found that greater weight loss was consistently associated with higher rates of adverse events and treatment discontinuation.
“Most agents [active ingredients] do not improve quality of life meaningfully and few show cardiovascular benefits,” the authors of the study wrote.
In the trials, participants completed standard health‑related quality‑of‑life questionnaires. Researchers compared how much these scores changed with the weight‑loss drugs versus lifestyle changes alone and found that across the main treatments there were no clinically meaningful improvements in quality of life.
