Overview
- A JAMA Psychiatry research letter published Wednesday reports interim results from an ongoing cross-sectional study of 436 people with eating disorders showing elevated GLP-1 use in this population.
- About 32.1% of participants reported lifetime GLP-1 use and 22% reported current use, while roughly 10% met the study’s definition of misuse, which includes changing dose, extending use, tampering with injections, or sharing medication.
- Use varied sharply by disorder: just over 10% in typical anorexia nervosa compared with more than 40% in atypical anorexia and over 50% in binge eating disorder, and about 32% of lifetime users reported adverse events.
- Nearly 10% of respondents said they had used compounded or noncommercial GLP-1 products, reflecting easy access through unregulated channels that bypass medical oversight and raise safety concerns.
- The authors stress the findings are preliminary because the data are cross-sectional, self-reported, and nonprobability sampled, and they call for routine eating-disorder screening, closer follow-up of patients on GLP-1s, and more rigorous studies to measure harms and sources of acquisition.