FRIDAY, May 8, 2026 (HealthDay News) -- Despite a sharp uptick in the use of glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists, most U.S. adults with severe obesity do not receive treatment, according to a study presented at the annual meeting of the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery, held from May 3 to 7 in San Antonio.
Ruth Laverde, M.D., from the University of California San Diego, and colleagues examined trends in bariatric surgery and GLP-1 receptor agonist use among adults with severe obesity (body mass index ≥35 kg/m2) without diabetes using electronic health record data (Epic Cosmos; 2016 through 2024), representing nearly 34.2 million U.S. patients.
The researchers found that bariatric surgery rates rose steadily, from 0.03 percent in 2016 to 0.24 percent in 2023, with a slight downtrend to 0.21 percent seen in 2024. Simultaneously, GLP-1 receptor agonist use steadily increased, from 0.03 percent (with a sharp increase after 2022) to 5.3 percent in 2024. This translated to an increase from fewer than 4,600 prescriptions in 2018 to more than 1.4 million in 2025. However, 94.4 percent of patients with severe obesity received no treatment.
"Undertreatment of obesity in the U.S. is well-known, but seeing the magnitude in this database is striking -- tens of millions untreated despite multiple effective therapies," Laverde said in a statement.
