More than 25,000 Irish people now receiving weight-loss jab Ozempic for free, but only to treat diabetes

It is only licensed here to treat diabetes, but some doctors are prescribing it off-label for patients with obesity.

A new study yesterday, to mark World Obesity Day, ranked Irish men 41st for prevalence of obesity among high-income, English-speaking countries, with Irish women ranked 90th.

The global obesity table in the Lancet placed Irish girls at 106 for prevalence among the countries, with boys at 118.

The indications are, however, that obesity levels in adults in Ireland have fallen slightly, while the spike in weight gain seen in the UK during the pandemic has not been observed here.

Professor Donal O’Shea, the ­national clinical lead for obesity, said another weight-loss drug, Saxenda, is ­available here and is licensed to treat obesity.

He expressed hope that at the end of this year, Ireland should have access to a wider range of weight-loss treatments, including Wegovy, which is a higher dose of semaglutide and is injectable like Ozempic.

He said doctors have written to the medicines management programme in the HSE to reduce the age at which the treatments can be given.

It would mean the cut-off age of 18 could be reduced to 12.

Ozempic works very well in around a third of people and less so in ­another third, while it has not been effective in others.

“We should be treating obesity before complications start,” Prof O’Shea said.

The Lancet analysis of global data estimated that among the world’s children and adolescents, the rate of obesity in 2022 was four times the rate in 1990.

Among adults, the obesity rate more than doubled in women and nearly ­tripled in men.

In total, 159 million children and ­adolescents and 879 million adults were living with obesity in 2022.

The Coalition for People Living with Obesity has launched a podcast, Irish Men and Obesity, featuring the personal experiences of five Irish men.

Prof O’Shea said the aim is to close the gap between the amount of women seeking help for their obesity (70pc) and the amount of men seeking help (30pc).

He said everyone deserves equitable access to treatment, but also everyone needs to understand there is no stigma attached to looking for that care.

The hope is to reduce the gap between women and men seeking care in the next decade.

Meanwhile, new research to be presented at the European Congress on Obesity in Venice next May and published in the journal Diabetologia suggests that having a low birth weight, together with being overweight in young adulthood, but not childhood, contributes to the development of type 2 diabetes at an early age of 59 years or younger in men.

Researchers from the University of Gothenburg and Sahlgrenska University Hospital, both in Sweden, also found that babies with a low birth weight who were overweight at age 20 years had a 27pc absolute risk of developing early type 2 diabetes.

It suggests that preventing excess weight gain during young adulthood in boys born with low birth weight could reduce the absolute risk of early type 2 diabetes by 21pc.