October 5, 2023 – People taking popular medications akin to 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 considered one of 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 individuals 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 usually are not about scaring people away from weight reduction medications, but slightly about raising awareness that these potential unwanted 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 couple of 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 opposed 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 concerning 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 danger 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 just isn't the primary report of gastrointestinal problems related to these medications, however it is considered one of the most important. Most reports involved a couple 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 health insurance claims from roughly 16 million U.S. patients. Sodhi and colleagues studied individuals who were prescribed either semaglutide or liraglutide (Saxenda), two important 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 medical records is that researchers couldn't confirm that individuals were only taking semaglutide or liraglutide for weight reduction. Some people could have taken them for diabetes or each.