Individuals prescribed GLP-1 medicines usually tend to start-and-stop than most individuals assume, based on a research being offered Sunday at ENDO 2026, the Endocrine Society’s annual assembly in Chicago, Sick.
Our research requested two questions that have not been properly answered till now: How many individuals with kind 2 diabetes taking GLP-1 medicines really cease utilizing them? And what number of restart them?”
Sainikhil Sontha, M.S., analysis affiliate, Boston College College of Public Well being, Boston, Mass.
The researchers carried out a retrospective cohort research utilizing Komodo Well being U.S. claims knowledge (January 2019 to June 2025). The group included adults aged 18 to 64 years with a BMI ≥25 kg/m² and kind 2 diabetes who began liraglutide, semaglutide, or tirzepatide, and had beforehand enrolled inside the final yr with greater than 6 months of follow-up.
Discontinuation was outlined as having greater than a 60-day hole in filling their GLP-1 prescriptions. Getting a brand new fill after discontinuation was thought-about as reinitiation.
“Utilizing insurance coverage information from greater than 60,000 Individuals with kind 2 diabetes, we discovered that about 4 in 10 sufferers stopped their GLP-1 medicine inside the first yr, and practically 6 in 10 had stopped by the tip of two years,” Sontha stated.
However in addition they discovered one thing encouraging.
“Greater than half of those that stopped restarted remedy inside a yr (41.5%), and practically two-thirds did so inside two years (58%),” Sontha stated. “This implies that for a lot of sufferers, these medicines aren’t being deserted completely; use is extra start-and-stop than most individuals assumed.”
Utilizing Cox proportional hazards fashions, in addition they took sociodemographic, scientific and provider-level predictors into consideration.
Sontha and colleagues discovered that these on Medicaid or Medicare, Black sufferers, and people experiencing nausea or different stomach-related unwanted side effects (37%) have been extra more likely to discontinue a GLP-1 medicine inside a yr.
Individuals have been 10% much less more likely to cease if their first GLP-1 medicine was prescribed by an endocrinologist.
What’s extra, individuals taking newer medicines like tirzepatide have been 41% much less more likely to discontinue than these taking older medicine like liraglutide. Semaglutide customers have been 28% much less more likely to discontinue anti-obesity medicine use than these taking older medicines.
“This analysis issues as a result of constant use of those medicines is what produces their protecting results,” Sontha stated. “Stopping early might imply missed alternatives to forestall coronary heart assaults, kidney illness development and different issues.”
The researchers hope that these findings give suppliers, insurers and policymakers an thought of which sufferers want extra assist to remain on GLP-1 medicines, he stated.
