Ozempic linked to stomach paralysis, other gastrointestinal issues: UBC study
Global News
The study, published in JAMA, found these adverse gastrointestinal effects happen in non-diabetic patients using the drugs specifically for weight loss.
Popular weight loss drugs such as Wegovy and Ozempic, are associated with an increased risk of stomach paralysis, pancreatitis and bowel obstruction, according to a study released Thursday out of the University of British Columbia.
The study, published in JAMA, found these adverse gastrointestinal effects happen in non-diabetic patients using the drugs specifically for weight loss.
Ozempic, Wegovy, Rybelsus and Saxenda are all medications used to treat Type 2 diabetes; however, they are also marketed as weight-loss drugs. The drugs — known as s known as GLP-1 agonists — work by triggering insulin release, blocking sugar production in your liver, and making you feel full. Health Canada has approved all four drugs for the treatment of diabetes.
The UBC researchers found that when people take these drugs strictly for weight loss, it can cause a serious risk of medical conditions.
“We’ve seen a lot of anecdotal reports and some case reports highlighting people who have experienced significant vomiting and nausea, up to 15 to 20 times per day once they started using one of these GLP-1 agonists, ” Mohit Sodhi, a researcher on the study and pharmaco-epidemiology researcher at UBC, told Global News.
“The fact that we found that there is potentially an increased risk in with gastroparesis (stomach paralysis) in people who use these drugs for weight loss, that was quite surprising for us… just to kind of lend support to what some of these people have been experiencing.”
To figure out whether there was a link between these weight loss drugs and issues like stomach paralysis, the researchers looked at health insurance claim records of around 16 million patients in the United States. They then examined prescriptions of the two main GLP-1 agonists — semaglutide (Ozempic) or liraglutide (Saxenda) — between 2006 and 2020. They also included patients with a recent history of obesity, but excluded those with diabetes or who had been prescribed another antidiabetic drug.
The researchers checked the patient’s medical records to see how many developed four different stomach-related problems: pancreatitis, bowel obstruction, gastroparesis (stomach paralysis) and biliary disease (a group of conditions affecting the gall bladder).
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