What GLP-1s Are Actually Approved to Treat

The list of things GLP-1 medicines are said to do has grown much faster than the list of things any regulator has approved them for. Scroll long enough and the class collects credit, or blame, for nearly everything. The prescribing labels are quieter and far more specific, and they are the only list that carries regulatory weight. This page puts all of them in one place.

What follows is a reading of the current United States prescribing information for every GLP-1 product this site covers, organized into one table. Indications change as new trials are submitted and reviewed, and this table reflects the labels as read on the publication date. Treat it as a snapshot rather than a permanent fact, and treat the label inside the box, or the DailyMed page behind it, as the live authority.

What an indication actually is

An indication is the specific use the FDA approved, in the specific population that was studied to support it. It is a narrow document. It is not a statement about what a molecule can do in theory; it is a record that a particular product, at particular doses, was studied in particular people, and that the evidence cleared the bar for that use in that group. This is why two products can share a molecule down to the atom and still carry completely different approved uses, which the semaglutide pair and the tirzepatide pair each demonstrate.

The narrowness cuts both ways. An indication's absence does not mean a medicine does nothing for that use. It means that use was not submitted and reviewed on that evidence for that product. Reading a label as a ranking misreads what a label is, and this page avoids ranking on principle.

Every product, one table

Doses are deliberately absent from the table, because doses live on a different page: the dose ladders, product by product, are tabulated in GLP-1 Titration Schedules Explained, Medication by Medication. Two age details in the table deserve a plain statement. The pediatric ages differ by purpose: 10 and older on the diabetes side, for Mounjaro, Trulicity and Victoza, and 12 and older on the weight side, for Wegovy injection and Saxenda, with Saxenda also setting a minimum body weight of 60 kg. And the newest three indications each belong to exactly one product, which is worth its own section.

GLP 1 Tracker AppReal titration ladders for every product above, with dose logging, side effect notes and a weight trend. The record behind whatever your label says. Get the app

One product per new indication

Three of the newest indications in the class belong to exactly one product each. The liver indication, treatment of noncirrhotic MASH with moderate to advanced fibrosis, stages F2 to F3, belongs to Wegovy injection alone, under accelerated approval, and it has its own long read in GLP-1s and Fatty Liver: What the Trials Report. The sleep apnea indication belongs to Zepbound alone, covered in Zepbound and Sleep Apnea: What the Indication Covers. The kidney indication, covering sustained eGFR decline, end stage kidney disease and cardiovascular death, belongs to Ozempic injection alone, and the practical side of that subject is in GLP-1s and Your Kidneys: Why Dehydration Is the Risk.

The pattern is worth noticing, because headlines rarely keep the product names attached. A reader who hears that the class is now approved for liver disease, sleep apnea or kidney protection, and who takes a different product, may assume their label changed too. It did not. The indication is pinned to the product that was studied, which is precisely what an indication is.

The cardiovascular pattern, and the wall between the two lists

Cardiovascular risk reduction is the most widespread indication in the table, carried by six of the eleven products, and it is not one identical indication repeated. The populations differ in the label wording. Ozempic injection and Victoza cover adults with type 2 diabetes and established cardiovascular disease. Oral semaglutide and Mounjaro cover adults with type 2 diabetes at high risk for these events. Trulicity covers adults with type 2 diabetes who have established cardiovascular disease or multiple cardiovascular risk factors. Wegovy covers adults with established cardiovascular disease and either obesity or overweight, a population defined without diabetes. Those are different trials with different entry criteria, and what the outcome trials actually showed has its own article in GLP-1s and the Heart: What the Outcome Trials Showed.

The other pattern is the wall between the two lists. No weight management product on this table carries a type 2 diabetes indication, and no diabetes product carries a weight management indication, even where the molecule is identical, as with Ozempic and Wegovy, or Mounjaro and Zepbound. The pairs each have a comparison article: Ozempic vs Wegovy: Same Molecule, Different Rules and Mounjaro vs Zepbound: Same Molecule, Different Labels.

What off-label means

Off-label prescribing means prescribing a medicine outside its approved indication: a different use, a different population, or both. It is legal for a prescriber to do, it is common across all of medicine, and it is a professional judgment made with a person in front of them, not a loophole. It is also not the same thing as an unapproved or compounded product, which is a separate subject with its own page in Tracking Compounded Semaglutide: Extra Care, Extra Notes. The vocabulary for all of this, indication, contraindication, titration and the rest, is collected in GLP-1 Words Decoded: A Plain-English Glossary.

What off-label status mostly changes in practice is coverage and paperwork. Insurers approve what the label names, and a use outside it invites questions, prior authorizations and sometimes denials, which is a paperwork problem rather than a pharmacology one. The page for that machinery is Prior Authorizations: How Your Dose Log Helps the Paperwork, and no promise about any plan belongs here, because plans differ.