Compounding Pharmacies for Weight-Loss Drugs Are Booming. Should You Trust Them?

Before the pandemic, Diane Kinkade lost weight with diet and exercise. But by 2026, she decided she needed to try something else. She had prediabetes and high blood pressure, in addition to being overweight, but her doctor declined to prescribe her a GLP-1 weight-loss medication, saying he thought the side effects outweighed the benefits. So she asked around and found a telehealth site that seemed more than happy to send her a prescription for a GLP-1 after a brief questionnaire.But the telehealth site didn’t send her a brand-name drug. It instead partnered with a compounding pharmacy to send her tirzepatide, the active ingredient in Eli Lilly’s popular drug Zepbound. The compounded drug represented significant cost savings—$250 a month versus the $399 a month she would have paid through LillyDirect, the direct-to-consumer site that people often use when their insurance doesn’t cover the drug. Kinkade, who is 72, says she wasn’t too worried about injecting herself with what the compounding pharmacy had sent, a combination of tirzepatide and vitamin B12. At first, she started to lose weight. But a few months into her injections, the telehealth site switched compounding pharmacies, a...