Will GLP-1s be a breakthrough drug for menopause care?

As women entering our late thirties (Chrissy) and early forties (Leslie), one of the big questions we’ve been grappling with lately is how menopause should be categorized. It’s a hectic life stage for most women due to family, work and caregiving responsibilities. And for some lucky women, light in terms of menopause symptoms. For others, it represents something closer to an experience of a disease, given the physiological changes that women experience and the fluctuations in hormones. While our physician readers may disagree with the “disease” terminology, most would agree that menopause brings with it some notable increases in health risks for women.

Why does this matter? Is it more than semantics? Diseases can be treated with medication, and in our country, there may also be billing codes associated with treatment. It also raises important questions that the life sciences world is only beginning to tackle, related to whether new drugs can be developed to delay menopause, not just to bring women more years of fertility, but also to slow down the aging process.

We’re committed to menopause as a big theme for the coming year - and we look forward to hearing your thoughts and comments about what we should be covering. Thanks to Found for making this edition of the newsletter free for all our subscribers!

This edition is sponsored by Found, a physician-designed weight care platform that has served more than 250,000 people with clinical care, medication, health coaching, habit tracking, and a supportive community.'

By Leah Rosenbaum

Around 6000 women go through menopause each day in the United States, and the global menopause market is expected to reach $24.4 billion by 2030. At Second Opinion, we’ve been writing for several years now about why menopause is finally becoming big business. And we see another sector on the rise in parallel.

GLP-1s are a breakthrough for a growing number of conditions, including obesity and cardiovascular disease. The estimated market size of these drugs ranges from $100 billion to $150 billion by 2030. We’ve been tracking the convergence of menopause and GLP-1s and believe this is only the beginning of how they will be viewed as a treatment for women during midlife. Potentially even as a women’s health drug.