Diabetes drugs like Ozempic have been hailed as major game changers for those wanting to rapidly lose weight, but a new study finds these medications can come “with a heightened risk of severe gastrointestinal problems.”
UBC researchers say they’ve found links between the drugs known as GLP-1 agonists and a number of serious issues, including stomach paralysis, pancreatitis, and bowel obstruction.
Previous studies have highlighted potential risks in diabetes patients. However, this is the first large-scale, population-level study conducted on non-diabetic patients using drugs such as Wegovy, Ozempic, Rybelsus, and Saxenda for weight loss, researchers add.
Mohit Sodhi, a pharmaco-epidemiologic researcher and a fourth-year medical student at UBC, says it should be “noted that the absolute risk of these events is relatively rare.”
For example, he says only about 10 out of every 1,000 people using semaglutide in his research cohort presented with gastroparesis. This equates to about one per cent, he notes. However, on a larger scale, this can be more concerning.
“When you blow it up to a population level when you have millions of millions of people taking these drugs worldwide, that obviously could potentially impact a lot of people,” Sodhi explained.
“For ease of math, for example, if [you have] a million people … taking these drugs and then one per cent of that is about 10,000. That’s still a significant amount of people, and will continue to grow as more and more people take these medications.”
Sodhi notes previous case studies and research papers have outlined adverse events linked to GLP-1 agonists.
He says he’s personally seen some of these ailments clinically.
“Where someone has come in with unexplained nausea and vomiting — like up to 15 to 20 times a day — and the only thing that we could see is that they recently started, I think it was Ozempic. So it’s entirely possible that these are happening as we speak. So, with regards to the results, I can’t say I’m surprised, necessarily, but, in a way, it kind of does reaffirm what we’ve been seeing anecdotally and in literature,” Sodhi said.
There have been many concerns raised after drugs like Ozempic started gaining popularity for their weight-loss effects. Much of this prominence came after celebrity endorsements and after the drugs were touted for their effects on social media.
Dr. Michael Lyon, the medical director of the Obesity Medicine and Diabetes Institute, believes more oversight is needed.
“I think we don’t really know the negative long-term implications of these drugs, and there certainly are going to be some,” he told CityNews Monday, prior to the research findings being published.
“We really don’t have any idea what the long-term implications are for people that don’t really need them for serious medical reasons. And I think that’s where, if they’re used exclusively for cosmetic purposes, like if an individual, for instance, doesn’t have any metabolic derangements associated with some modest weight gain, and they go on the medication simply to look better on a beach, I just can’t see that there’s an ethical argument for for that.”
Lyon says the drugs are currently restricted to people who have a Body Mass Index (BMI) “over 30 or 27, with weight related comorbidities.”
However, he notes restrictions “fail to recognize that there are people with a BMI over 30 that are completely healthy.”
“At the end of the prescribing end of the things, it requires an astute clinician, who, out of necessity, make sure that they fully understand a patient before they write that prescription. It shouldn’t be something that’s done lightly, shouldn’t be something that’s done simply because the patient comes in and says, ‘I want this,’” Lyon explained. “We resist that all the time.”
Sodhi says all research authors in this study are “strong proponents for informed patient consent” when it comes to any sort of medical intervention or medication use.
“When someone is considering using these drugs for weight loss, it’s important that they have a conversation with their health-care provider and the health-care provider also know what some of the possible adverse side effects of these medications are,” Sodhi said.
“It’s also worth mentioning that people who use these medications specifically for weight loss, their risk-benefit-calculus may differ from those who are using it for diabetes.”
source & photo : CityNews
