Take weight-loss jab for life or get FAT minute you stop

Patients taking a new controversial weight-loss jab should be prepared to stay on it for the rest of their lives, experts have warned.

Although effective, studies show those who stop semaglutide – sold in Australia under the brand name Ozempic – can regain much of the weight they lose.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence earlier this year recommended the medication for adults with a body mass index of at least 35 and one weight-related health condition – such as diabetes or high blood pressure.

But obesity experts have claimed Nice’s guidelines that the jab be taken for only two years may not be sufficient. Professor Carel Le Roux, an expert in metabolic medicine at Ulster University, said: “These are treatments for the disease of obesity.

“What happens is, when you treat people effectively, the disease comes under control. The minute you stop the drug, the disease relapses.”

Boris Johnson mentioned in his first column for the Daily Mail in June that he had tried Ozempic after seeing how it helped a Cabinet colleague to lose weight.

The former prime minister said the medication had him “pushing aside the puddings and the second helpings – I must have been losing four or five pounds a week”.

But Mr Johnson admitted he ceased taking the drug as it seemed to make him unwell.

Professor Le Roux suggested the medical profession was comfortable prescribing the drug for conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis or high blood pressure and the same should be the case of managing obesity.

But he added: “One of the most important questions we ask patients now is, ‘Are you prepared to take this treatment for the rest of your life?’.

“If you’re not able to do that, you should stop because then we are probably at risk of doing more harm than we are doing good.

“So it’s important to re-frame this as a disease that we are treating and that these are disease-modifying drugs, not weight-loss drugs.”

Professor John Wilding, who leads clinical research into obesity, diabetes and endocrinology at the University of Liverpool, said: “We do have to think about these medicines as long term – despite the fact that, for Nice at the moment, it’s only two years of treatment.

“We do know obesity is a chronic disease and we would never think of just giving somebody a diabetes drug or blood pressure drug for two years and then stopping it because at that point the disease will recur.”

Research results – published last year in the journal Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism – on people who stopped semaglutide revealed they regained two-thirds of their lost weight over the next year.