By John Ely Senior Health Reporter For Mailonline
12:25 01 Apr 2024, updated 12:31 01 Apr 2024
Children as young as six will get powerful slimming jabs in a new trial, MailOnline can reveal today.
Weight loss injection semaglutide, branded as Ozempic and Wegovy, has already been rolled out for adults.
But health chiefs have, so far, held back from doling out the jabs to tackle Britain’s bulging child obesity crisis.
The two-and-a-half-year trial, sponsored by the jab’s maker, Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, could change that.
This is despite experts raising concerns about the potential effects of doling out the brain-hacking drugs to children.
Slimming jabs have been linked to cancer, gallstones and suicidal thoughts, though exact long-term effects remain a mystery since they are relatively new.
Officials also recommend they are taken for life, otherwise users may simply pile the pounds back on.
Critics have also said such a move, while tackling the problem of childhood obesity, fails to address the drivers which are making British children fat in the first place.
More than 200 children will be recruited as part of the global study, which will involve four NHS hospitals in Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds and Liverpool.
One arm of the trial will consist of children aged between six and 12.
The second will involve kids up to 17, who have gone through the earliest stages of puberty.
Children given semaglutide will also need to be obese or have at least one weight-related health issue, such as type 2 diabetes or high blood pressure.
Kids taking part will also have to sign up to a dieting and exercise regime.
Study documents describe this as a ‘reduced-calorie diet and increased physical activity’ but doesn’t offer any more details.
Children who take part will be randomly assigned either semaglutide or a dummy-drug, a placebo.
Those taking semaglutide will start on 0.25mg for four weeks, before increasing to 0.5mg, 1mg and 1.7mg. Dosage will cap at 2.4mg.
Children will have their weight and BMI tracked throughout the course of the study, up until two years after they first take the drug.
Then Novo Nordisk scientists will compare the weight-loss results for children who took semaglutide alongside diet and exercise to those in the placebo group.
They will also record any adverse health events in the children.
The study is estimated to close in November next year.
A similar trial in adults showed volunteers taking the drug could lose 15 per cent of their weight, compared to just 2.5 per cent in the placebo group.
That Novo Nordisk study, published in 2021, was one of those instrumental in seeing Wegovy, and its sister drug Ozempic, become a household name.
Since then, supplies of the drug have been snapped up, including by celebs.
Even Ozempic stock, another semaglutide drug but one which is designed to help diabetics control their blood sugar, has ran low due to soaring demand.
Children can get technically already get semaglutide in the UK, but it isn’t routinely available on the NHS.
NHS clinicians can, in theory, give it to kids because the drug is already approved for use in adults, a practice standard for numerous medications.
However, this is typically only through dedicated specialist weight management services for children and only for severe cases.
Such prescriptions aren’t standard and can vary based on an individual clinician’s discretion and local NHS trust policies.
Children could also potentially be prescribed the drugs privately under similar mechanisms.
The US and the EU have already approved the drug for use in fat children aged 12 and above in limited circumstances.
However, the NHS medications watchdog The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) said it was unable to make a recommendation regarding Wegovy in children in June, citing a lacking of evidence from Novo Nordisk.
The currently recruiting trial could form part of the evidence NICE needs to make an official recommendation for British children.
While Novo Nordisk, as well as rival Eli Lilly with its similar weight loss jab Mounjaro, are testing their jabs on children as young as six, no health authority has yet recommended the use of the drugs in children this young.
Clinical trials of semaglutide and children have been held in the UK before.
But these have been in adolescents, and mostly among those with existing weight-related health problems such as type 2 diabetes.
Semaglutide works by triggering hormones in the brain which trick the body into slowing digestion and keeping the stomach full, reducing appetite, and consequently, the amount people eat.
While hailed as a ‘gamechanger’ in the fight against bulging waistlines, the jabs have notable downsides.
Patients have to take the jabs for life or see the pounds they lost pile back, doctors have warned.
Some rival pharma companies have also labelled the jabs as indiscriminate drugs as people not only lose weight on them but muscle mass as well.
Additionally, like any medication, they can have side effects that vary in both frequency and severity.
These include nausea, constipation and diarrhoea, fatigue, stomach pain, headaches and dizziness.
Weirder and much rarer side effects, like hair loss, have also been reported.
A Novo Nordisk spokesperson said: ‘Novo Nordisk is focused on providing further innovation and understanding of childhood obesity through research and development but also through long-term partnerships with the obesity community and obesity organisations to make obesity a healthcare priority.’
The Danish pharma giant is enjoying a massive boom in profits thanks to the huge hunger for its weight loss jab.
Earlier this year it revealed it was making £32million per day, as countries grappling with the financial cost of flab grapple to get their hands on the jabs.
NHS England said while the trial is being held at health service facilities, the study was not an NHS trial.
The latest childhood obesity data for England shows one in 10 children are too fat by the time they start primary school, rising to about one in four among Year 6.
Obesity also takes a massive financial toll in the UK, with the resulting health consequences on loss working years, care costs, and price of NHS treatment costing the economy an estimated £100billion per year.
Experts have pointed to a lack of exercise, and poor diets high in ultra-processed food, as being key drivers in the UK’s childhood obesity epidemic.
Critics have repeatedly called for unhealthy foods to be slapped with harsh warning labels and a restrictions to be imposed on junk food advertising to help families make healthy choices.
TV star and author Dr Chris van Tulleken is among those who have called for the Government to focus on prevention rather than new drugs to tackle the nation’s growing waistlines.
Semaglutide has been nicknamed Hollywood’s ‘worst kept secret’ after bursting onto the scene, with fans including Elon Musk and Jeremy Clarkson.
Even Kim Kardashian was rumoured to have used it to rapidly lose 16lbs (7.3kg) to fit into Marilyn Monroe’s iconic ‘Happy Birthday Mr President’ dress at the 2022 Met Gala.
But it’s not working for all the starts who are opting to take it.
Appearing on the Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon earlier this month, 55-year-old American comedian and actor Tracy Morgan revealed he ‘out-ate’ Ozempic and gained 40 pounds (18kg) while taking it.
Last year, TikTok star Remi Bader admitted that stopping Ozempic made her binge eating get ‘so much worse’.
She said she was prescribed it because she was pre-diabetic and insulin-resistant and gaining weight.
‘They said I need this. And I had a lot of mixed feelings,’ she said. ‘Because then… a few months later, got into the bad bingeing and went off it.’
She added: ‘I saw a doctor, and they were like, “It’s 100 per cent because you went on Ozempic”.
Sarah Carter is a health and wellness expert residing in the UK. With a background in healthcare, she offers evidence-based advice on fitness, nutrition, and mental well-being, promoting healthier living for readers.
