Obese children as young as six could receive Ozempic-style weight-loss jabs after a “promising” first trial.
Slimming injections were found to lower children’s body mass index (BMI) by 7.4 per cent in the study to assess the benefits of the drugs on primary school children.
During the research, pupils aged between six and 12 with an average weight of just over 11 stone, or 70kg, took a 56-week course of the daily weight-loss jab liraglutide.
The drug is one of a class of treatments known as glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists, which are already available on the NHS to treat adults with Type 2 diabetes or obesity.
It works in the same way as semaglutide, which is found in Ozempic and Wegovy, by mimicking the function of a hormone to make people feel fuller and reduce their appetite.
The trial, conducted by experts at the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis, involved 82 children defined as clinically obese with an average age of 10 and a BMI of 31.
Some 56 of the subjects took liraglutide and 26 received a placebo, while both were given individual diet advice and encouraged to exercise for at least 60 minutes a day.
After more than a year, the average BMI of the children who received the weight-loss jabs fell by 5.8 per cent – but increased by 1.6 per cent for those who were given the placebo, a difference of 7.4 per cent.
The children’s body weight grew by an average of 1.6 per cent for those who received liraglutide, compared with 10 per cent for those given the placebo.
The researchers said they expected some weight gain over the year as the children grew.
‘Considerable promise’
The findings open up the possibility that weight-loss injections could be made available to NHS patients in the future.
Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk manufactures both semaglutide and liraglutide, and is already seeking regulatory approval for the jabs to be prescribed to obese teenagers.
Other trials in children aged as young as six are also under way, including in the UK.
Prof Claudia Fox, the study’s lead author from the University of Minnesota’s Centre for Pediatric Obesity Medicine, said if childhood obesity was left untreated it “almost universally persists into adulthood and is associated with significant ill health, including diabetes and cardiovascular disease, and, for some, premature death”.
There is currently no medical treatment for paediatric obesity beyond lifestyle advice.
Prof Fox said there was no consensus on what a meaningful reduction in BMI amounted to, but that 5 per cent or more had previously been associated with improving some obesity-related illnesses.
In the trial, almost half of the children on liraglutide saw their BMI reduce by at least five per cent, compared to fewer than one in 10 of those who took the placebo.
Researchers reported similar side effects to those seen in older cohorts, including gastrointestinal issues such as nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea, some of which were deemed “serious” in nature.
Both groups of children saw their BMI and body weight increase once the trial had ended.
Prof Fox said the findings “offer considerable promise to children living with obesity” who are currently told “to ‘try harder’ with diet and exercise”.
‘Risk of negative consequences’
Dr Simon Cork, a senior lecturer in physiology at Anglia Ruskin University, said giving the drugs to children was “complicated by the fact that children are actively growing, and therefore there is a possibility for greater risk, particularly with regards to appetite suppression, since such medication has the potential to stunt growth.”
He said more studies would be needed “to ensure that appetite suppression in these children does not have unforeseen negative consequences”.
The findings were presented to the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) and have been published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The results of the first study into new weight-loss pills were also presented at EASD’s annual meeting.
Amycretin, also developed by Novo Nordisk, has a two-pronged approach as it is both a GLP-1 and amylin, so mimics two separate hormones involved in appetite regulation.
The 12-week trial in adults found it reduced body weight by between 10.4 per cent and 13.1 per cent, depending on dose, compared to just 1.1 per cent for those who received placebo pills.
The researchers said more studies were needed to test its safety and effectiveness over a longer period.
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