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 blockbuster 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 days, and there is a paucity of data on compliance with the new drugs, doctors say they are noticing another astounding 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,” said Kimberly DelRosso of Pembroke, Massachusetts, who takes Wegovy.
She has never forgotten to take her weekly injection. By contrast, she says, 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.
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There’s a price to pay for neglecting to take prescription drugs. An astonishing 40% to 50% of people who are prescribed medicines for chronic conditions like high blood pressure or diabetes 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.
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So what might be making the obesity drugs different? For one, while doctors are usually the ones to recommend drugs like statins or blood pressure drugs, patients are often asking doctors for obesity drugs. Many have spent a lifetime trying any diet and exercise program they could find, and every time they lost weight, they gained it back again.
On the minus side, though, the obesity drugs are expensive and often require doctors to fill out burdensome preauthorization forms for insurance. The drugs have consistently been in short supply around the country. Those impediments can make them difficult to get.
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