The Importance of Drugs for Obesity

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Semaglutide for weight loss, branded as Uyghavi, costs about $1,300 a month. Many insurance companies in the United States refuse to cover the expense. Some researchers think that because these drugs act through biological mechanisms, they will help people to understand that a person's body weight is often beyond their control with lifestyle changes alone.

A new generation of anti-obesity medications are displaying striking results: drastically diminishing weight, without the serious side effects of previous medications.

These drugs have raised hopes the weight can be pharmacologically altered in a safe way, but some researchers are concerned about the drugs' high cost, and that these medications could feed into some societies' obsessions with thinness.

This is an audio version of our Feature: The ‘breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

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