October 5, 2023 – People taking popular medications resembling Ozempic, Wegovy and Rybelsus for weight reduction are at higher risk of probably serious stomach and intestinal problems than people taking a weight-loss drug approved in 2014, a big study shows.
Those who took one among these drugs, called glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists, were nine times more prone to develop pancreatitis, an often painful inflammation of the pancreas, compared with others who took a mixture from naltrexone and bupropion taken for weight reduction (brand name Contrave).
Other results show that folks taking these medications:
- They were greater than 4 times more prone to have an intestinal obstruction, which prevents food from passing through the big or small intestine, with symptoms including nausea, vomiting, cramps and/or bloating
- They were greater than three and a half times more prone to develop gastric paresis, a blockage of food within the stomach that may cause nausea, vomiting and stomach pain
The study was published today within the Journal of the American Medical Association.
According to the researchers, their findings aren’t about scaring people away from weight reduction medications, but relatively about raising awareness that these potential unwanted side effects can occur. This allows people to weigh the risks and advantages before beginning to take these medications.
Rare, but there
People taking these drugs for weight reduction have a few 1 percent to 2 percent risk of developing these events, including a 1 percent risk of gastric paresis, said Mahyar Etminan, PharmD, senior writer of the study and a drug safety expert and pharmacoepidemiology on the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.
Given the Popularity and wide use With these medications, these adversarial events, although rare, “need to be taken into account by patients considering using them for weight loss,” said co-author Mohit Sodhi, a graduate of the University of British Columbia's Experimental Medicine Program and a medical student fourth yr in a press release in regards to the study.
People who take GLP-1 to treat diabetes could also be more willing to simply accept the risks due to the potential advantages, particularly reducing the chance of heart problems, Etminan said. “But those who are otherwise healthy and are only taking them for weight loss may want to weigh the risk-benefit ratio more carefully,” he said.
Stomach constipation warning
This will not be the primary report of gastrointestinal problems related to these medications, nevertheless it is one among the biggest. Most reports involved a number of individuals with stomach and other problems.
The FDA announced on September 28 that it will require drug manufacturers to: a Warning of intestinal blockages on the Ozempic label.
As for ileus, the medical term for intestinal blockage, “this is another condition that Ozempic users may suffer from,” said Steven Batash, MD, a senior physician on the Batash Endoscopic Weight Loss Center in New York City. He was not involved within the study.
“There are some gastrointestinal disorders that are more likely in people who use weight loss products like Ozempic, including a less common side effect – gastroparesis, also known as stomach paralysis,” said Batash, a gastroenterologist at NYU Medical Center, Lenox Hill Hospital , and semaglutide, the energetic ingredient in these medications, slows digestion within the stomach and, in rare cases, may cause gastroparesis, he explained.
The recent study's results are based on medical insurance claims from roughly 16 million U.S. patients. Sodhi and colleagues studied individuals who were prescribed either semaglutide or liraglutide (Saxenda), two major GLP-1 agonists, between 2006 and 2020. FDA approval of GLP-1 for weight reduction didn't come until 2021, so researchers also included people whose records showed a recent history of obesity.
One limitation of taking a look at medical records is that researchers couldn’t confirm that folks were only taking semaglutide or liraglutide for weight reduction. Some people can have taken them for diabetes or each.