Amid growing concern of the overuse and misuse of obesity drugs, the UK’s pharmacies regulator rolled out stricter guidelines for online pharmacies selling medicines including Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy and Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro.
The UK’s regulatory authority for pharmacies on Monday announced that it will require online dispensers to employ stricter checks for patients seeking weight loss injections, according to several media reports.
The General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC)—which sets standards for online and physical pharmacies—will no longer allow online sellers to provide weight loss medicines on the basis of online questionnaires alone, according to the BBC. The announcement covers drugs like Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy and Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro. Instead, pharmacies will need to independently verify the information that patients provide.
Patients and pharmacies should not rely “solely on an online questionnaire but instead using a method of two-way communication . . . which allows the person to ask questions and the prescriber to get all the information they need to prescribe safely,” the GPhC said in its website.
Measures that could be part of this verification process may include video or in-person consultations to determine the patients’ body mass index. Pharmacies will also need to cross-reference information from other doctor and medical records.
Pharmacies that fail to comply could be subjected to GPhC investigations and inspections, alongside other enforcement actions, according to the BBC report.
The new GPhC guidelines come amid growing concern about the overuse and safety of obesity therapies. In December 2024 top officials at the World Health Organization (WHO) published an opinion piece in the Journal of the American Medical Association, noting that while weight loss injections could prove “transformative” for treating obesity, “medication in isolation will not be enough to address the obesity crisis.”
Instead, health systems should employ a holistic response to obesity, one “that ensures universally available services to prevent, treat, and manage the disease in a way that is accessible, affordable, and sustainable,” the WHO officials argued. They also recommended “a whole of society approach” that includes health promotion, disease prevention and effective food and urban environment policies.
Similarly, Stephen Powis, national medical director of England’s National Health Service, expressed his alarm in June 2024 that may people have been using weight loss injections for cosmetic ends, treating them as “a quick fix” to obesity, as per the BBC.
“Drugs including Ozempic and Wegovy should only be used by people prescribed them for obesity or diabetes—I’m worried about reports that people are misusing them—they are not intended as a quick fix for people trying to get beach-body ready,” Powis said.
