Bariatric surgery more effective than obesity drugs

• Researchers say weight loss surgery is the best option for losing and sustaining weight loss.
• GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy help people lose weight, but the researchers said weight often returns when people stop taking the medications.
• Researchers reported that 10 years after bariatric surgery, many people still weighed 25% less than before their operation.

Compared to GLP-1 medications such as Ozempic and Wegovy, bariatric surgery provides the most significant and most sustained weight loss, according to a study presented at the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery’s 2024 Annual Scientific Meeting.

For their findings, which haven’t been published yet in a peer-reviewed journal, researchers completed systematic reviews of studies published between 2020 and 2024.

They reported that bariatric surgery, also called metabolic or weight-loss surgery, provided better results — both in terms of weight loss and sustained time — than GLP-1 agonists.

The scientists reviewed studies that included thousands of people from clinical studies and several randomized clinical trials. They reported that lifestyle interventions, including diet and exercise, resulted in an average weight loss of 7% of body weight. However, they reported that people typically regained the weight within about 4 years.

They said that GLP-1 medications and weight loss surgery were superior to lifestyle interventions.

“Diet and exercise do not work for the vast majority of people,” said Dr. Christine Ren-Fielding, the chief of bariatric surgery at NYU Langone Health and surgical director of NYU Langone’s Weight Management Program in New York.

“Genetic makeup is often to blame,” Ren-Fielding, who was not involved in the study, told Medical News Today. “The perception of people who are obese is that they are lazy and don’t care. That usually isn’t true. They need options other than diet and exercise.”