On October 7, the WHO launched two new guidelines on the integrated management of obesity in children and adolescents, one covering children from 29 days to under 10 years and one covering adolescents. For children aged 0 to 9, the agency said it “does not recommend pharmacological treatment, bariatric surgery or weight-loss devices,” and instead strongly recommends structured dietary, physical activity, and behavior-change interventions delivered individually or as part of a multimodal program. Digital health interventions are conditionally recommended with parental supervision.
For adolescents aged 10 to 19, the guidance is more permissive but gated. Approved medicines may be considered only after a supervised multimodal lifestyle program has not achieved the desired results, and bariatric surgery may be considered under strict conditions for physically and mentally mature adolescents with severe obesity. Luz María De Regil, director of WHO’s Department of Nutrition and Food Safety, said there is not yet enough evidence on GLP-1 drugs in young people, and the guidance may be revised as trial results emerge.
The context is scale: an estimated 170 million children and adolescents aged 5 to 19 were living with obesity in 2024, including 70 million children aged 5 to 9, and prevalence in this age group has quadrupled since 1990, from 2 percent to 8 percent. Some GLP-1 medicines are already approved for weight loss in certain adolescent patients. Those approvals are not revoked, and WHO guidance is advisory rather than binding. But for health systems in markets that track WHO recommendations, the guidance draws a clear line that delays pharmacological treatment for the youngest patients.