33
votes
Some patients who took weight-loss drugs face disturbing side effects
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Title
- They took blockbuster drugs for weight loss and diabetes. Now their stomachs are paralyzed | CNN
- Published
- Jul 25 2023
Knight and Wright have been diagnosed with severe gastroparesis, or stomach paralysis, which their doctors think may have resulted from or been exacerbated by the medication they were taking, Ozempic.
Wright said she has also been diagnosed with cyclic vomiting syndrome, which causes her to throw up multiple times a day....
Doctors say that more cases like these are coming to light as the popularity of the drugs soared. The US Food and Drug Administration said it has received reports of people on the drugs experiencing stomach paralysis that sometimes has not resolved by the time it’s reported.
And last month, the American Society of Anesthesiologists warned that patients should stop these medications a week before surgery because they can increase the risk that people will regurgitate food during an operation, even if they’ve fasted as directed. Vomiting under anesthesia sometimes causes food and stomach acid to get into the lungs, which can cause pneumonia and other problems after surgery.
So far, extreme and unrelenting cases like these are believed to be rare, and they may be a result of the drug unmasking or worsening an existing “slow stomach.” Doctors say people can have a silent condition called delayed gastric emptying and not know it. There’s nothing on the drugs’ labels that specifically cautions that gastroparesis may occur.
So these are issues that never got caught during trials of the drug? Did they not have a large enough amount of people testing it, or is it that these issues are just that rare? And only come to light because millions are using it now?
The generic name is semaglutide. Here's the listed side-effects in the British National Formulary: https://bnf.nice.org.uk/drugs/semaglutide/#side-effects
Very common means more than 1 in 10 people experienced it. Common means between 1 in 10 and 1 in 100 people experienced it. Uncommon means between 1 in 100 and 1 in 1000 people experienced it.
I don't know what's hidden under "gastrointestinal disorders" there.
Clinical trials run on small groups of people and lots of people are excluded from clinical trials, so it's not particularly unusual for medication to be less effective or have more side-effects.
It's really important that patients are aware of the self reporting systems
EDIT: There's a bunch of somewhat technical detail in the NICE review: https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ta875/chapter/3-Committee-discussion
I can't access the article but did they really conflate these two terms considering how different they could be? To me there's a big difference between 1% and possibly 15%.
I think you’re focusing on the wrong media problem here. These drugs have life-saving uses (generally, Diabetes).
But as soon as it became known that these drugs were associated with weight loss, there were an avalanche of articles championing their use for this purpose (Google: “semaglutide weight loss” or “semaglutide miracle” for reference). Anecdotally, the only narrative I’ve seen discussed online for the last few months is about use of these drugs for weight loss (see here for instance)
Now here we are with all of the FDA approved versions of these drugs in a shortage and we start to hear about potentially serious side effects of these drugs (again, that are lifesaving for diabetics) and the media is selling fear?
This isn’t the first time this has happened and it probably won’t be the last (edit: though I seriously doubt it will be as bad as fen-phen)
More that the overwhelming media narrative has been to uncritically promote these drugs for weight-loss, while arguably perpetrating a moral wrong (denying access to a necessary drug to people who medically need it), and either ignoring or being woefully ignorant of how terribly wrong that exact narrative has gone in the past.
In that light, I don’t really care if the media starts reporting on side-effects to make a buck.
I don’t think that saying 40% of America might die because of who they are is really exemplifying mutual respect, especially since it may not be as true as the prevailing culture says it is.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2813817/
Such thoughtful answers are why I appreciate this website community. I would love it if there were a protocol to test for slow stomach or delayed emptyng or whatever it's called before prescribing the drugs.
Do you live in a country like the US that has highly funded advertising of prescription drugs to the individual as well as to doctors? Someone motivated to find a weight loss drug might turn to the black market if a physician rejected their request. A patient who truly needs these drugs will make an informed choice with their doctor's guidance. I will never forget signing a consent form for treatment when one of the listed side effects was sudden death.
But in the US, I am not at all sorry that these rare side effects are becoming public knowledge. Here, people who don't have personal experience with serious medical treatment, might not fully understand or appreciate the knowledge and insight of trained physicians. We are frequently independent minded and want to research things for ourselves and make up our own minds.
I'm no expert, but it looks to me as though these are rare but severe side effects. It would be good to find actual statistical analysis. The article makes it sound as though these effects have been under reported but I'm not in any position to verify that.
Lately I've seen a LOT of billboards and advertisements for Ozempic. I'm in Toronto so they're everywhere on the subway.
The annoying thing is that it's a fantastic medication for people with diabetes and they can't get their hands on it because people are using it for weight loss and pharmacies are running out.