CDC Data Show Many GLP-1 Users Skip Doses to Save Money

Atlanta, Georgia — About one in 10 US adults, or roughly 27 million people, used a GLP-1 medication in 2025, and nearly half of them did not take the drug as prescribed, according to survey data published this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as reported by Ars Technica.

The finding, drawn from a CDC analysis of responses from more than 8,000 US adults collected between July and August 2025 and published in the agency's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, puts a number on a pattern doctors have described anecdotally for months: patients stretching supplies of drugs such as Ozempic, Wegovy and their compounded counterparts because they cannot reliably afford or obtain them.

How many Americans are using GLP-1 drugs?

The CDC estimate — 9.8 percent of US adults, or about 27 million people — covers glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists prescribed for diabetes, weight loss and a widening list of conditions including cardiovascular disease and obstructive sleep apnea, according to the survey cited by Ars Technica. The drugs have moved from niche diabetes treatment to mainstream prescription in a few years, a shift the CDC researchers say is now large enough to show up clearly in national survey data.

Why are users changing how they take the medication?

Among people who reported using a GLP-1 in 2025, 44 percent said they used it differently than prescribed, skipping doses, delaying refills or taking smaller amounts than directed, the CDC survey found. More than half of those who modified their use pointed to cost or availability as the reason, according to the same data.

The burden was uneven by age. Fifty-eight percent of GLP-1 users between 14 and 39 years old who changed how they took the drug cited cost as a barrier, compared with 20 percent of users 65 or older, the CDC researchers reported. The gap suggests insurance coverage, which tends to be more consistent for older Americans on Medicare, plays a role in who can follow a prescription as written and who cannot.

What role do compounded GLP-1 drugs play?

At least 23 percent of GLP-1 users in the survey took a compounded version of the drug, and another 9 percent said they did not know whether their medication was compounded, according to the CDC data relayed by Ars Technica. Compounded versions are made by specialty pharmacies to mimic approved products such as Wegovy or Ozempic, typically at lower cost, but they are not reviewed by the Food and Drug Administration for safety, effectiveness or quality before sale.

Modified use was far more common among compounded-drug users: 62 percent of people taking an unapproved version reported deviating from their prescription, compared with 36 percent of people using brand-name drugs, the survey found. That split illustrates the core trade-off driving demand for compounded GLP-1s — lower price and easier access, set against a product the FDA has not vetted.

What are the risks of using unapproved versions?

Compounded drugs carry higher documented rates of preparation errors, contamination and other manufacturing problems than FDA-approved products, according to the CDC researchers' summary of the evidence. The agency also flagged a separate 2025 study of websites selling compounded GLP-1 medications, which found that nearly 40 percent of those sites stated or implied their products were FDA-approved — a claim that is false and one the CDC said makes it harder for consumers to judge what they are actually taking.

For patients, the practical risk is twofold: a compounded product that varies from batch to batch in strength or purity, and a dosing schedule — skipped injections, smaller-than-prescribed amounts — that has not been studied for the specific drug formulation in use. Neither the long-term safety nor the effectiveness of common modifications, such as stretching a month's supply over six weeks, has been established in clinical trials, the CDC noted.

What happens next for patients and regulators?

The CDC presented the figures as a baseline rather than a policy recommendation, and the report does not call for a specific regulatory response. The data do, however, sharpen a question regulators and insurers have faced since GLP-1 demand outpaced supply: whether the compounding pathway, intended as a stopgap during drug shortages, has become a permanent affordability outlet that carries its own set of risks. Pharmacies and manufacturers were not quoted directly in the CDC summary, and the agency's report stopped short of attributing specific health outcomes to modified or compounded use, saying only that the real-world patterns raise questions for further study.

For now, the survey offers the clearest public accounting yet of how a drug class built around strict, physician-set dosing is actually being used by millions of people navigating cost and supply gaps on their own.

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