Obesity Drug’s Real Costs Mount as Users Don’t Know When to Stop

Two years and more than a million prescriptions after Wegovyfirst went on sale, there’s one taboo question for some doctors who prescribe the hit obesity drug: When can patients stop taking it?

The new medicine by Novo Nordisk A/S and others in the same class can melt away pounds that diet and exercise don’t budge. But it doesn’t change the underlying issues that drive metabolism, leaving newly lean people wondering whether they will need to bear the expense and the side effects of the drugs for decades or risk relapse.

Packets of Wegovy move along a conveyor at Novo’s production facilities in Hillerod, Denmark, on June 12.

Photographer: Carsten Snejbjerg/Bloomberg

The weight rebound is a growing problem in ...