Reacción a "A meta-analysis confirms weight regain after discontinuing anti-obesity drugs"

This paper is a comprehensive analysis of the available data on weight regain after cessation of weight loss treatments (note that I am lead author for the STEP 1 extension trial with semaglutide and am also an author for some of the other trials that have addressed this question).  I note that quite a lot of the data concerns older medicines that are no longer available, however agree that the data seems to be valid across medication classes and for the newer medicines that are now most commonly used:

1.  The results are not surprising.  Obesity is a chronic disease that usually relapses when treatment is stopped.  We do not expect interventions for other chronic diseases (e.g. diabetes, high blood pressure or high cholesterol) to continue working when treatment is stopped and there is no scientific reason to expect obesity to be different.
2. We do know from studies in diabetes and from the SELECT trial of semaglutide in people without diabetes that people at high risk of cardiovascular disease are less likely to have an adverse cardiovascular event such as a heart attack or stroke if they take GLP1 based drugs long term (these studies are usually of 3-5 years duration).
3. Hence, we should consider these as long-term treatments, not as a quick fix.
4. I note weight regain tended to be slower after intensive lifestyle interventions.  I would be cautious about interpretation of this as the populations included in these trials are likely to be different from those included in trials of medication, and I would always advocate lifestyle support to be used alongside weight loss medications to optimise outcomes anyway.