A study involving 16 million people in the US found that those prescribed so-called GLP-1-agonists had an increased risk of serious gastrointestinal conditions, including stomach paralysis
By Grace Wade
6 October 2023
The active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy has been linked to health problems when used to treat obesity
Natalia Varlei/Shutterstock
People prescribed semaglutide – the active ingredient in medications commonly used for weight loss, like Ozempic and Wegovy – have a higher risk of developing rare but serious gastrointestinal conditions, including stomach paralysis. That’s the conclusion of an analysis of the side effects associated with the weight loss medications.
Ozempic and Wegovy belong to a new class of highly effective weight loss drugs which work by mimicking a hormone – GLP-1 – that encourages us to feel satiated after eating. Both drugs contain a so-called GLP-1 agonist, semaglutide, as their active ingredient. Similar drugs contain different GLP-1 agonists, including one named liraglutide. While these drugs have been used to treat type 2 diabetes for over a decade, they were only recently approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for people with obesity. As such, relatively little is known about the long-term side effects of taking GLP-1 agonists for weight loss.
To plug that knowledge gap, Mohit Sodhi at the University of British Columbia in Canada and his colleagues used a large health database that includes 16 million people in the US and captures information on 93 per cent of the country’s out-of-hospital prescriptions and diagnoses between 2006 and 2020.
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The researchers found 4757 participants with obesity who were prescribed either semaglutide or liraglutide during this period. None of them had diabetes, which suggests they were given the drug for off-label use – presumably to help them lose weight.
The team then compared the medical history of these participants to the medical histories of a second group of 654 people in the database who had obesity and who were prescribed a different weight loss medication called naltrexone/bupropion.