Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an estimate of the number of deaths caused by weight-loss drugs in each of the last five years.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is responsible for ensuring medicines, medical devices, and blood components for transfusion meet applicable standards of safety, quality, and efficacy. The MHRA rigorously assesses available data, including from the Yellow Card scheme, and seeks advice from their independent advisory committee, the Commission on Human Medicines, where appropriate to inform regulatory decisions.

Patient safety is our top priority, and no medicine would be approved unless it met our expected standards of safety, quality and effectiveness. Our role is to continually monitor the safety of medicines during their use, including GLP-1 receptor agonists (RAs). We have robust, safety monitoring and surveillance systems in place for all healthcare products.  When a safety issue is confirmed, we always act promptly to inform patients and healthcare professionals and take appropriate steps to mitigate any identified risk. New medicines, such as GLP-1 RAs, are more intensively monitored to ensure that any new safety issues are identified promptly.

It is important to note that a reaction reported to the Yellow Card scheme does not necessarily mean it has been caused by the medicine, only that the reporter had a suspicion it may have. Underlying or concurrent illnesses may be responsible, or the events could be coincidental.

Based on the current evidence, the benefits of GLP-1 RAs outweigh the potential risks when used for the licensed indications. The decision to start, continue or stop treatments should be made jointly by patients and their doctor, based on full consideration of the benefits and risks. We strongly encourage patients and healthcare professionals to continue reporting suspected side effects to GLP-1 RAs through our Yellow Card scheme.

The following table shows the number of Yellow Card reports received for each GLP1 RA with a fatal outcome up to and including 31 January 2025, along with the number of these which were reported with an indication relating to weight management:

Source: MHRA database

As the use of the GLP-1 RAs increases, so have the number of Yellow Card reports associated with these medicines. Yellow Card reporting rates can be influenced by many factors including the seriousness of the adverse drug reactions, their ease of recognition and the extent of use of a particular product. Reporting can also be stimulated by publicity and awareness about a product.