Weight management drugs and adjunct care: a rapid review
Authors: The Evidence Service, Kate Shiells, Hannah Shaw, Amy Hookway, Golibe Ezenwugo
Published on: 1st September 2026
Next update: Update not planned
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Introduction
Obesity is becoming more common in Wales and effective ways to help people lose weight have been limited until now. New medicines being introduced in the UK, like semaglutide and tirzepatide, are GLP-1 drugs that have been shown to be effective in supporting some people to lose weight. However, in clinical trials these drugs were usually prescribed alongside additional support (adjunct care), such as dietary advice, physical activity programmes, or behavioural counselling. To ensure these medicines are used effectively in practice, we need to understand what types of additional support work best when provided alongside GLP‑1 treatments.
Main points
How up to date is the evidence?
We carried out the searches for this rapid review in 2025 and utilised the included studies from a previous agile scoping review undertaken on weight management drugs. We identified studies published between 2021 and 2025.
What we found
- We identified 17 primary studies reporting weight loss outcomes associated with GLP-1 drugs plus additional support.
- Most additional support included diet changes, exercise goals, and lifestyle counselling.
- No study clearly measured how much the additional support helped, and differing drug dosages and adjunct care interventions used in individual studies made them difficult to compare. Therefore, it was not possible to determine the impact of the additional support on the overall findings within each study.
What this means
- Providing additional support could take a lot of NHS resources, so it’s important to know what support is most effective, when and to whom.
- Future research should test which types of additional support work best, how long they should last, and whether they help people keep weight off after stopping the drugs.
- There isn’t much evidence yet about psychological support alongside weight loss drugs, so more studies are needed.
- Research should also look at whether additional support helps people make long term changes and avoid regaining weight.
Technical information
We carried out a rapid review using streamlined yet rigorous systematic review methods to find and summarise evidence quickly. We searched for studies looking at GLP-1 drugs alongside extra support for weight management in adults who are overweight or living with obesity.
Glossary
GLP-1s: Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1s or GLP-1RAs) are medicines that help people feel fuller by mimicking a natural hormone released after eating. In the UK, there are several licensed GLP-1 medicines including semaglutide and tirzepatide.
Adjunct care: Adjunct care in health encompasses a range of therapies and interventions that are provided alongside primary treatments to enhance their effectiveness and improve patient outcomes.
Rapid review: Is a form of evidence synthesis that accelerates the process of conducting a traditional systematic review to produce evidence in a time-sensitive manner, usually to inform urgent healthcare decisions.
Systematic review: A review that summarises the evidence on a clearly formulated review question according to a predefined protocol, using systematic and explicit methods to identify, select and appraise relevant studies, and to extract, analyse, collate and report their findings. It may or may not use statistical techniques, such as meta-analysis
Primary study: An original research investigation where researchers collect and analyse data directly (for example, surveys, interviews, or experiments), rather than summarising other studies
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