Prescribing data for young people is scarce, and Denmark’s registries make it available in a way few countries can match. This study covers everyone aged 12 to 24 who filled one of these prescriptions over seven years [1]. The perinatal version of the same rapid-adoption picture is in perinatal prescribing rose thirtyfold.
Growth was extraordinary. Overall use rose more than 50-fold to 418 new users per 100,000 by 2025 — noting that is per hundred thousand, so under half a percent of the age group. The steepest climb was among 18-to-24-year-olds, from 13 to 686 per 100,000; among adolescents aged 12 to 17 it went from 1.7 to 72. Most users were female and few had diabetes.
Two findings point at the same gap. A third of these young users had a psychiatric comorbidity, particularly emotional and neurodevelopmental disorders, and 78% of treatments were initiated in general practice rather than by a specialist. The authors call for specialist involvement, long-term safety data and careful evaluation of mental health in this group — which is a statement about monitoring rather than a claim that harm occurred.
The transfer to a cash market is where care is needed. Denmark has universal healthcare and prescriptions linked to national registries, so “initiated in general practice” means a doctor who holds the patient’s record. A young person buying through a telehealth seller has no such relationship, and the 38% persistence figure describes people whose prescriptions were at least being tracked. What the same pattern looks like when nobody is tracking is the subject of two thirds stop within a year.
For a parent or a young buyer the practical reading is about the shape of the commitment rather than the drug. Most people this age who start do not continue past a year, and weight returns when treatment stops — so the question worth asking before the first payment is what the plan is for month thirteen. The cost side of that is in what a GLP-1 actually costs and the two regain numbers.