Overview
Evidence-based recommendations on liraglutide (Saxenda) for managing overweight and obesity alongside a reduced-calorie diet and increased physical activity in adults.
This guidance covers the management of obesity and non-diabetic hyperglycaemia (pre-diabetes) in a specialist weight management (tier 3) service.
It is expected that most people will have been offered weight management interventions in a local, evidence-based, quality-assured intensive lifestyle-change programme (such as the NHS diabetes prevention programme). This guidance covers people who have been referred to a tier 3 service because these weight management interventions have been unsuccessful.
Last reviewed: 9 December 2020
This guidance replaces the NICE evidence summary on obese, overweight with risk factors: liraglutide (Saxenda) (ES14).
Next review: This guidance will be reviewed if there is new evidence that is likely to change the recommendations.
It should be used alongside NICE's guideline on type 2 diabetes: prevention in people at high risk.
Commercial arrangement
There is a commercial access agreement for liraglutide. Contact saxendauk@novonordisk.com for details.
Guidance development process
How we develop NICE technology appraisal guidance
Your responsibility
The recommendations in this guidance represent the view of NICE, arrived at after careful consideration of the evidence available. When exercising their judgement, health professionals are expected to take this guidance fully into account, alongside the individual needs, preferences and values of their patients. The application of the recommendations in this guidance is at the discretion of health professionals and their individual patients and do not override the responsibility of healthcare professionals to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual patient, in consultation with the patient and/or their carer or guardian.
All problems (adverse events) related to a medicine or medical device used for treatment or in a procedure should be reported to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency using the Yellow Card Scheme.
Commissioners and/or providers have a responsibility to provide the funding required to enable the guidance to be applied when individual health professionals and their patients wish to use it, in accordance with the NHS Constitution. They should do so in light of their duties to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, to advance equality of opportunity and to reduce health inequalities.
Commissioners and providers have a responsibility to promote an environmentally sustainable health and care system and should assess and reduce the environmental impact of implementing NICE recommendations wherever possible.