Whereas thousands and thousands of People have turned to popular weight loss drugs to shed kilos in recent times, taking them isn’t with out some dangers.
Now, analysis led by the scientists on the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention has discovered that tens of hundreds of People have ended up within the emergency room after taking semaglutide: the energetic ingredient in GLP-1 medication, together with drugmaker Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy. The findings could also be an indicator that extra affected person training is important in relation to taking the medication.
“We discovered that it’s very rare that semaglutide results in very severe adversarial occasions that may land a affected person within the hospital, however that they do happen,” Dr. Pieter Cohen, an affiliate professor of drugs at Harvard Medical College, instructed Health.
Cohen was one of many authors of the examine which was printed earlier this month within the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.
Utilizing nationwide surveillance information collected at dozens of hospitals, they estimated that semaglutide had been a contributing think about practically 25,000 emergency room visits from 2022 to 2023. Greater than 82 % of these visits occurred in 2023, and the rationale was often gastrointestinal problems. Sufferers skilled nausea, vomiting, abdomen ache, and diarrhea.
Some individuals additionally got here into emergency rooms with allergic reactions and hypoglycemia, which is also called low blood sugar. A handful of sufferers had been recognized with pancreatitis and simply 4 had been recognized with biliary illness, which impacts the gallbladder.
Cohen mentioned researchers didn’t anticipate to see so many sufferers in search of take care of low blood sugar.
Novo Nordisk didn’t instantly reply to a request for touch upon the findings, nevertheless nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, abdomen ache, and constipation are additionally listed as widespread unwanted effects of the medication.
Notably, the authors didn’t know whether or not individuals who visited the hospital had been taking Ozempic, Wegovy, or a copycat semaglutide ready by pharmacists. Cohen mentioned taking a compounded semaglutide may clarify the low blood sugar. Moreover, about 9 percent of the visits concerned treatment errors.
Many medication could cause unwanted effects that might end in a visit to an emergency room. A earlier examine printed in 2021 discovered that approximately 1 in 200 Americans go to the emergency room every year as a consequence of medication-related harms.
Nonetheless, the researchers say counsel medical doctors can do extra to mitigate the possibly extreme unwanted effects of those medication, which have been utilized by about one in eight U.S. adults.
“Clinicians may counsel sufferers when initiating semaglutide concerning the potential for extreme gastrointestinal adversarial results and alter coprescribed antidiabetic medicines to lower hypoglycemia threat,” they wrote. “Moreover, when evaluating sufferers with new-onset gastrointestinal signs or hypoglycemia, clinicians may take into account current semaglutide use.”
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