Twenty times more new mothers are starting GLP-1 drugs in the months after giving birth

Starting a GLP-1 drug soon after childbirth has gone from rare to routine in US claims data. Analyzing more than 1.1 million deliveries among 911,908 commercially insured women, researchers at USC's Schaeffer Center found the share who filled a first GLP-1 prescription within six months of delivery rose from 0.08% in early 2018 to 1.9% by early 2025. The rise was steepest among women with type 2 diabetes, from 2.3% to 16.9%, but by the second half of 2024 most new initiators were outside that group: 40.4% had overweight or obesity, 20.6% had had gestational diabetes, and 20.7% had no pre-delivery diagnosis at all. Most women started three to six months after delivery, not immediately.

For clinicians, the trend cuts two ways. The authors suggest the drugs may represent an important postpartum treatment for persistent metabolic risk — the need is real, particularly for women whose gestational diabetes raises their later risk of type 2 diabetes — and US trends track a Danish study that found the same rise once semaglutide was approved for weight loss. But Tennessee ob/gyn Nikki Zite notes many initiators had no pre-pregnancy diagnosis, leaving it unclear whether the medicines are reaching some women who might not need them if they were more patient with postpartum weight loss.

The unknowns are the point of the researchers' own warning: lead author Sih-Ting Cai says postpartum use is likely rising even faster than the numbers show, while the safety evidence hasn't kept pace. Reviews of use around pregnancy have not found a clear increase in adverse maternal or perinatal outcomes, but experts still urge caution; what is missing includes safety data during breastfeeding — the claims could not show who was breastfeeding — and whether the drugs affect mental health or encourage overly rapid loss of baby weight. The study also captured only commercially insured women and could not see cash-pay telehealth or compounded prescriptions, so the true postpartum uptake, and its safety picture, are both larger and murkier than the claims show. For any one mother, whether to start is a decision that belongs with a qualified clinician, in the context of a person's health history.

Read the full story at MedPage Today ↗