Weight management medications, including Wegovy, Zepbound and Foundayo, are now available to eligible Medicare beneficiaries. Universal Images Group/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Universal Images Group/Getty Images A Medicare pilot program for GLP-1 drugs launched Wednesday. Beneficiaries may be able to get a GLP-1 prescription for weight loss for $50 a month. It’s a notable shift for Medicare, which has long been barred from covering weight loss treatments. The drugs, such as Wegovy and Zepbound, are effective […]

Mouse lines All experiments were conducted in compliance with the Association for Assessment of Laboratory Animal Care policies and approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees of the University of Virginia, University of Washington and University of California, Irvine. Mice were housed on a 12-h:12-h light–dark (LD) cycle with food (PicoLab Rodent Diet 5053) and water provided ad libitum unless otherwise indicated. For experiments, we used 8-week or older male and female C57BL/6J mice, Glp1r-IRES-Cre […]

The takeaway:

The new, temporary Medicare GLP-1 Bridge program will expand affordable access to certain weight-loss medications for eligible Medicare beneficiaries. It starts July 1, 2026 and is set to run through Dec. 31, 2027. The program has the potential to make a real difference in removing barriers to proven obesity treatment. Why GLP-1 medications matter GLP-1 medications, or glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists, were originally developed to help patients manage Type 2 diabetes. Over time, researchers discovered these medicines […]

Lizzy leads STAT’s coverage of the FDA. Her stories explore the relationship between politics and science at the FDA, industry influence, and the agency’s ability to protect and promote public health. Confidential tips can be sent on Signal at lizzylaw.53. WASHINGTON — Millions of Americans with obesity are eagerly awaiting a powerful new drug from Eli Lilly called retatrutide, which has demonstrated bariatric-surgery levels of weight loss. Some aren’t even waiting for approval from the Food and […]

(NewsNation) — A new study suggests more teens and young adults are turning to drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy for weight loss, while fewer are opting for weight-loss surgery. The research, published in JAMA Pediatrics, examined more than 204,000 patients ages 13 to 25 who received obesity treatment between 2022 and early 2026. It found that by the start of this year, more than 96% of patients receiving obesity treatment were using GLP-1 medications alone, up […]

Switching to the oral small molecule glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) orforglipron after taking injectable GLP-1s helped patients maintain most—but not all—of their weight loss, according to a clinical trial led by Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian investigators. While injectable GLP-1s work well for weight loss, keeping the weight off after discontinuing the therapies is challenging. The results of the ATTAIN-MAINTAIN trial, published May 12 in Nature Medicine, showed that switching to the once-daily orforglipron pill may address this […]

A University of California, Riverside preclinical study is shedding light on a long-observed but poorly understood phenomenon: chronic cannabis users tend to have lower body weight and a reduced risk of developing type 2 diabetes, despite the drug’s well-known tendency to increase appetite. Nicholas DiPatrizio A team led by Nicholas V. DiPatrizio, a professor of biomedical sciences at the UCR School of Medicine, set out to investigate this apparent paradox. While cannabis is commonly associated with increased […]

Shaina Alexandria, PhD, assistant professor of Preventive Medicine in the Division of Biostatistics and Informatics, was a co-author of the study published in Nature Medicine.  A time-restricted eating program — consuming all meals between 1 p.m. and 7 p.m. without tracking calorie intake — promoted greater weight loss in women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) than no intervention, according to a randomized controlled trial published in Nature Medicine.   The results suggest time-restricted eating can promote weight loss and potentially alleviate symptoms in women with PCOS, an endocrine disorder that affects nearly 1 in 5 women of childbearing […]

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