Hundreds of children in England are being prescribed GLP-1 drugs, including some under 12, according to figures obtained by the Guardian from the NHS Business Services Authority.
The numbers cut through the adult branding that has come to cling to these medicines. Wegovy and Mounjaro have been sold into public life as a strange hybrid of treatment, aspiration and internet content. What the data shows instead is a much less glamorous reality: these drugs are already part of paediatric obesity care, and not only for teenagers.
The Guardian reported that 419 prescriptions were issued to under-18s in the 2025-26 financial year, including 10 for children under 12. In a separate four-month period from April to July, 341 prescriptions were issued to children, including 15 for those under 12. The figures cover prescriptions in England that were dispensed in a community setting anywhere in the UK.
They also appear to be incomplete. The data does not include private prescriptions, hospital dispensing or prisons, so the total is likely higher. The report also notes that it is not clear from the figures alone whether every prescription was primarily for weight loss rather than another clinical use.
That uncertainty matters, but it does not make the broader shift disappear. Children are already receiving medicines that the culture still tends to discuss through the aesthetics of celebrity thinness and adult self-optimisation. In practice, the clinicians quoted by the Guardian describe something much harsher: children with severe obesity, often with serious related conditions, receiving GLP-1s after other interventions have failed.
Martin Whyte, a professor of metabolic medicine at the University of Surrey, said children starting these drugs should do so within specialist services with long-term support and monitoring. He pointed to the need to track growth, puberty, nutrition, mental health, eating behaviours and side effects, adding that weight often returns when treatment stops and that long-run data in growing children remains limited.
That is the commercial and medical tension underneath the prescription count. These drugs are effective enough that specialists want access to them for some children; they are also new enough in this age group that experts are still talking carefully about supervision, licensing and what happens over years rather than months.
The Guardian also cited Dr Dunia Ismail, a consultant paediatrician running a Complications from Excess Weight clinic, saying services had largely stuck to age 12 but were looking at expanding to children aged eight and above once approved by licence. World Health Organization guidance says obesity medications including GLP-1s should not be given to children under 10.
Julian Hamilton-Shield, a clinician at the Bristol CEW clinic, said the drugs are typically used for children with very high excess weight and related illnesses such as type 2 diabetes, sleep apnoea and liver disease. His description is a useful antidote to the usual moral theatre around obesity. The children being discussed here are not a lifestyle trend. They are patients.
The same Guardian report notes National Child Measurement Programme figures showing 10.7% of reception-age children are obese, rising to 22.8% in year 6. Against that backdrop, the interesting thing is not whether GLP-1s have enough cultural heat already. It is that a medicine sold to adults through glamour, panic and before-and-after economics is quietly being folded into childhood care.
Isla Camilleri 
Sophia Borg 