Overweight individuals who take popular injectable weight-loss medications such as Ozempin and Wegovy may be at a higher risk for serious stomach problems than those who take some other weight-loss drugs, according to a new study.
For the study, researchers looked at insurance claims data for approximately 5,400 people who were obese but not diabetic and who were prescribed medications that contained semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy, liraglutide, the active ingredient in Saxenda, or Contrave, an older weight loss pill that contains a combination of the ingredients bupropion and naltrexone.
Compared with people taking the older pill, people taking Ozempine (a type 2 diabetes drug sometimes prescribed off-label for weight loss) or the weight-loss medications Wegovy and Saxenda were more than nine times more likely to get pancreatitis, according to the findings published in JAMA. Pancreatitis is an inflammation of the pancreas that can cause severe abdominal pain and often requires surgery. The new injected weight-loss drugs were also associated with a more than fourfold increase in the risk of bowel obstruction and a more than threefold increase in the risk of gastroparesis, or stomach paralysis, which can prevent food from moving through the intestines.
“Given the widespread use of these drugs,” lead study author Mohit Sodhi, a medical student at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, said in a statement, “these adverse events, while rare, need to be considered by patients thinking about using them for weight loss. “The risk calculus is different depending on whether a patient is using these drugs for diabetes, obesity, or just general weight loss. People who are otherwise in good health may be less willing to accept these potentially serious side effects.”