More Kids Using GLP-1 Drugs To Fight Obesity

TUESDAY, Sept. 8, 2026 (HealthDay News) — A growing number of younger children are being prescribed weight-loss drugs like Ozempic or Zepbound to treat their obesity, a new study says.

While it’s still relatively rare to see children younger than 12 prescribed GLP-1 drugs, the number was 310 times higher in June 2026 than it was when the drugs first came out in 2019, researchers reported Friday in the journal Pediatrics.

“While the absolute numbers of children under the age of 12 receiving GLP-1 treatment is still low, GLP-1 use is accelerating rapidly,” said lead researcher Dr. Babak Orandi, an associate professor of surgery and medicine at NYU Grossman School of Medicine.

“The careful use of GLP-1s remains a valuable tool in confronting the obesity epidemic among young Americans,” he added in a news release.

Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) drugs mimic the GLP-1 hormone, which helps control insulin and blood sugar levels, decreases appetite and slows digestion of food. Originally developed to treat type 2 diabetes, the drugs now are also widely used to lose weight.

For the new study, researchers analyzed data on more than 3.5 million U.S. children with obesity but not diabetes. They drew the data from a national dataset that includes information from nearly 1,900 hospitals and 42,400 health clinics.

Among children 8 to 11, GLP-1 prescriptions rose from 0.03% in 2019 to more than 9% in 2026, a 310-fold increase in just under eight years, researchers found.

Overall, nearly 20,300 children 8 to 11 had been prescribed GLP-1s among those studied, researchers said.

Older children with obesity were more likely than younger kids to be prescribed the drugs, even though they’re allowed to treat obesity in kids as young as 8, researchers said.

Most children with a GLP-1 prescription had severe obesity (94%), and most had at least one illness tied to obesity (65%) like high cholesterol, high blood pressure or sleep apnea, researchers found.

GLP-1 drugs can be very effective at treating obesity, leading to weight loss, better blood sugar control and appetite suppression, Orandi said.

Parents might hesitate at the thought of their kids using a GLP-1, but the drugs can help kids avoid long-term health risks like diabetes, high blood pressure and liver disease, Orandi said.

In this study, a quarter of young children with obesity prescribed GLP-1 drugs were prediabetic, Orandi noted.

However, the study also found that young children who lived in upper-income communities were 55% more likely to be prescribed GLP-1 drugs.

These prescribing patterns point to the beginnings of an access gap to GLP-1 drugs for young children, said co-senior researcher Allan Massie, an associate professor of surgery and population health at NYU Grossman School of Medicine.

“Physicians and health policy-makers alike have a responsibility to ensure, as use of GLP-1 medications continues to rise, that all young children with obesity who need these drugs have access to them and that these valuable and sometimes costly treatments become available to more than those who have access to health insurance and can afford to visit pediatric clinics,” Massie said in a news release.

The researchers also noted that long-term monitoring of children on GLP-1s is needed to make sure the drugs are safe and effective. 

Clinical trials are underway to test their effectiveness in children as young as 6 with obesity, Orandi said.

More information

Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago has more on GLP-1 drugs and children.

SOURCES: NYU Langone Health, news release, Sept. 4, 2026; Pediatrics, Sept. 4, 2026