NPR corrects report on obesity drug approvals after misstating timeline of GLP-1 treatments

NPR has issued a correction to its October 28 report, “Weight loss drugs are bringing down the country’s obesity rate, a survey shows,” after mistakenly stating that GLP-1 agonist drugs were first approved for obesity treatment in 2021.

In its correction, NPR clarified:

“An earlier version of this story mistakenly said that GLP-1 agonist drugs were first approved to treat obesity in 2021. There is a drug in the same class that was less effective at treating obesity that was approved in 2014.”

The initial report, written by Yuki Noguchi, cited new findings from the Gallup National Health and Well-Being Index, which suggested that America’s obesity rate has declined from a high of 39.9% to 37% of adults — a shift attributed largely to the rising use of injectable weight loss drugs such as Wegovy, Zepbound, and Mounjaro.

The correction matters because the approval timeline shapes the broader understanding of how long such medications have been available and their real-world impact on public health trends. While the latest generation of high-efficacy GLP-1 drugs indeed received approval in 2021, liraglutide, an earlier GLP-1 agonist sold as Saxenda, was first approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2014 for chronic weight management — making it the first drug in the class authorised for obesity.

The story correctly highlighted that usage of GLP-1 drugs has surged, with 12.4% of Americans now taking them, up from 5.8% in early 2024. It also noted that the drugs have been most widely adopted among adults aged 50 to 64, who saw the sharpest declines in obesity rates.

However, the misstatement of approval history risked oversimplifying a decade-long pharmaceutical evolution, implying that the fight against obesity had only recently begun to turn with drug-based interventions.