Weight loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy have skyrocketed in popularity over the past year, with celebrities, influencers and billionaires touting their transformative potential all over social media.
People cannot get enough of the injectable "wonder drug" with the hashtag #ozempic, which has amassed over 1 billion views on TikTok. However, while most people can safely use the drug, a small percentage of users may experience severe gastrointestinal side effects.
In a new study, published Thursday in the medical journal JAMA, researchers from the University of British Columbia (UBC) demonstrated that GLP-1 agonists—like Wegovy and Ozempic—are associated with an increased risk of serious medical conditions, including stomach paralysis, pancreatitis, biliary disease and bowel obstruction.
GLP-1 agonists like Ozempic work by mimicking the structure of a naturally occurring human hormone called glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1), which plays an important role in regulating appetite and blood sugar levels. By mimicking its structure, Ozempic and its sister drugs can activate the receptors that bind to this hormone.
Originally, Ozempic was designed to help control blood sugar levels in patients with Type 2 diabetes. But because GLP-1 is also involved in appetite regulation, Ozempic and its sister drugs can also keep you fuller for longer, inducing satiety and delaying gastric emptying. Therefore, it has been co-opted as a weight loss drug, and sister drug Wegovy was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2021 for weight loss specifically.
While many users do not experience significant side effects, others have complained about abdominal pain, nausea, cramping and diarrhea. And while more severe symptoms like stomach paralysis had been reported anecdotally, no large-scale epidemiological investigations had been performed to study these effects until now.
By examining data from a random sample of 16 million patients, the team from UBC identified roughly 4,700 individuals who had been prescribed one of two major GLP-1 agonists—either semaglutide, found in Ozempic, or liraglutide, found in Saxenda—between 2016 and 2020. Their study focused on patients who had been given these drugs for weight loss rather than diabetes, and so they used only patients with a recent history of obesity and no diabetic diagnosis.
Through this analysis, they found that 1 to 2 percent of individuals experienced one of the four serious medical side effects: biliary disease (which affects the bile ducts and gallbladder), pancreatic inflammation, bowel obstruction and stomach paralysis. When comparing these results to patients using another weight loss drug, bupropion-naltrexone, the results were striking.
Taking GLP-1 agonists like Ozempic was associated with the following:
- Nine times higher risk of pancreatic inflammation—this can cause severe abdominal pain and in some cases require hospitalization.
- Four times higher risk of bowel obstruction—food's intestinal passage is restricted, resulting in nausea, vomiting, cramping and bloating.
- Four times higher risk of stomach paralysis—also linked with symptoms of vomiting, nausea and abdominal pain.
There was no significant difference in risks associated with biliary disease.
"The exact mechanism is not clear," senior author Mahyar Etminan, a professor of epidemiology at UBC, told Newsweek. "But [because these drugs] work on the GLP-1 receptor which is present in the gastrointestinal tract, generally they probably [cause these problems] by slowing stomach emptying and affecting glucose metabolism."
While these side effects are not common, the sheer number of people taking these drugs—approximately 40 million in the U.S. as of 2022—means that roughly 40,000 to 80,000 individuals in the U.S. alone are at risk of developing these conditions.
"The risk calculus will differ depending on whether a patient is using these drugs for diabetes, obesity or just general weight loss," first author Mohit Sodhi said in a statement. "People who are otherwise healthy may be less willing to accept these potentially serious adverse events."
As these drugs become more accessible, Etminan said, users should be educated on how to recognize the symptoms of these side effects and know when to seek timely medical attention.
"Those who have preexisting biliary/pancreatic/gastric issues might want to think about taking these more carefully and discuss with their MD," he said.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Pandora Dewan is a Senior Science Reporter at Newsweek based in London, UK. Her focus is reporting on science, health ... Read more
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