Health news round-up: contraception, obesity inequalities and eating disorders on GLP-1s

This week, The Pharmaceutical Journal has reported on a drug to delay symptoms of type 1 diabetes mellitus, detail about the community pharmacy meningitis B vaccination campaign, renewed discussion around ‘excessive’ pricing of an epilepsy drug, a minimum age set for  the ‘PATHWAYS’ puberty blockers trial, and a successful smoking cessation clinic led by pharmacists and dentists that resulted in a 20% quit rate.

As temperatures soared amid the UK’s second heatwave of 2026, with the Met Office issuing amber and red heat warnings, contributors to The Pharmaceutical Journal have argued that medicines storage must be adapted to a warming climate.

Read on for more health news you may have missed this week.

Oestrogen-based birth control may protect brain later in life

Older women who used hormonal birth control in young adulthood were more likely to have larger volumes in brain regions vital to memory, cognition and information processing, a study of 459 women aged 65–80 years conducted at the University of Kansas found.

Co-lead author Amber Watts, professor of psychology at the university, suggested this was owing to the protective effect of oestrogen-based hormone therapies, even when used earlier in life.

New NHS treatments for cervical cancer

This week, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence recommended cemiplimab (Libtayo; Regeneron) as an option for adults with recurrent or metastatic cervical cancer that has progressed on or after platinum-based chemotherapy.

In addition, NICE recommended pembrolizumab, which was already recommended for persistent, recurrent or metastatic cervical cancer, for use earlier in the disease pathway as a routine first-line treatment option for adults with untreated locally advanced cervical cancer. NICE said its assessment had taken into account the potential for pembrolizumab to improve health inequalities as cervical cancer, especially in the advanced stages, has worse outcomes in deprived groups.

Obesity inequalities in England widen

Rates of new obesity cases have increased by 4% since the COVID-19 pandemic, with particular impact on young people, women, BAME people and those living in deprived areas, a study, published in The Lancet, found.

The Health Data Research UK study, which analysed NHS England electronic health records, covering nearly 55 million adults from 2019 to 2025, noted that rates of new obesity cases rose by almost 20% in those aged 30–39 years, and by 16% in those aged 20–29 years, while rates fell among adults aged 60–79 years.

Rates of new obesity cases were 35% higher for people with the highest socioeconomic deprivation. Young, well-off white men had the lowest rate of obesity — with 4% of affluent white men aged 18–19 years living with obesity — compared with 66% among the most socioeconomically deprived black women aged 60–69 years.

In general, the onset of obesity appeared to occur much earlier in non-white populations. Across socioeconomic quintiles and ethnic groups, there was a 14-year gap in the median ages of first presentation of obesity.

GLP-1s and eating disorders

People with eating disorders are more likely to use GLP-1 medication, a US study published in JAMA Psychiatry has suggested.

Around 30% of study participants reported lifetime GLP-1 use, compared with 15% observed in the general adult population. Of those, GLP-1 use was highest among study participants with binge eating disorder (around 55% of 66 participants) and those with atypical anorexia nervosa (around 42% of 50 participants). Use was lowest among participants with anorexia nervosa (around 11% of 116 participants).