More Kids Ages 8 to 11 Are Being Prescribed GLP-1 Medications, Study Finds

Doctors have guidelines allowing them to consider GLP-1 medications, such as Saxenda, Wegovy and Zepbound, for children ages 8 to 11 who have obesity. But until now, no one had actually studied how often these prescriptions were being written for kids this young, or how that’s changed over time. A new study published in Pediatrics set out to answer that question, looking at medical records for children ages 8 to 11 with obesity, but without diabetes, from 2019 through mid-2026.

Researchers looked at data from more than 3.5 million children in this age group. Overall, only 0.6% of these children were ever prescribed a GLP-1 medication, a small share. But that number tells only part of the story. Back in 2019, just 0.03% of children in this group were prescribed one of these medications. By 2026, that number had jumped to 9.3%, a 310-fold increase. In plain terms: These medications went from something almost no child in this age group was prescribed to something a meaningful number of them are now taking, in the span of just a few years.

Which Kids Are Most Likely to Get a Prescription

The study found a few clear patterns in who was actually getting prescribed these medications:

• Older kids were more likely to be prescribed. Eleven-year-olds were prescribed GLP-1 medications almost twice as often as 8-year-olds.
• Girls were prescribed more often than boys. This mirrors a pattern researchers have also seen in adults taking these medications.
• Kids with other weight-related health problems were prescribed far more often. Children who already had health complications linked to their weight, like high blood pressure or fatty liver disease, were more than three times as likely to be prescribed a GLP-1 medication than the overall group studied.
• Kids from less economically vulnerable backgrounds were more likely to get a prescription. Children from families with fewer financial or social challenges were prescribed these medications more often than kids facing greater hardship, even though research shows children in tougher circumstances often face higher rates of obesity and related health issues in the first place.

What This Means for Families

The researchers noted that despite the sharp rise in prescriptions, GLP-1 use remains uncommon overall and that children with existing weight-related health problems were far more likely to receive a prescription than the average child in the study, a pattern the study authors describe as clinicians appearing to reserve these medications for kids at the highest cardiometabolic risk.