Body weight reduction drug craze on TikTok concerns medical professionals

The diabetes drug Ozempic has come to be a social media phenomenon for its fat decline qualities, but its soaring attractiveness has led to world-wide shortages and physicians warn about the likely side effects.

Videos underneath the hashtag #Ozempic have almost 600 million sights on TikTok, wherever lots of buyers regularly update followers about their fat loss.

“Losing 40 kilograms (88 pounds) in significantly less than 3 months is possible” thanks to Ozempic, a French TikToker stated in a usual post in December with approximately 50,000 sights.

“It can be a wonder,” he included.

The injectable drug from Danish pharmaceutical agency Novo Nordisk was initially produced and authorised in various nations to take care of kind 2 diabetic issues.

The drug’s lively component, semaglutide, binds by itself to the receptors of a hormone which controls blood sugar, stimulating the launch of insulin when glucose degrees are high.

It slows down how rapidly food leaves a person’s abdomen, reducing their appetite.

In early 2021, peer-reviewed exploration identified that just about a few quarters of folks who employed the drug lost additional than 10 % of their overall body excess weight.

Novo Nordisk has given that designed a semaglutide drug with a bigger dosage identified as Wegovy precisely to deal with weight problems, which was permitted for use in the United States in 2021, and in Europe and the Uk very last 12 months.

Wegovy is not still on the market place in the United kingdom, France or several other nations around the world, but Ozempic is accessible with a regular prescription.

‘Not a magic drug’

This has led to a increase in people without having diabetes obtaining prescriptions for Ozempic, as perfectly as “falsified prescriptions,” mentioned Jean-Luc Faillie, a pharmacology specialist at France’s Montpellier College.

Douglas Twenefour, head of care at Diabetic issues British isles, reported on the charity’s internet site that Ozempic “is not a treatment for people who do not have diabetes or are at danger of form 2 diabetic issues”.

France’s medications regulator ANSM has urged medical professionals to only prescribe Ozempic for diabetes.

There has not been a especially “unexpected raise in usage in latest months,” the ANSM claimed, incorporating that there had been “supply tensions” worldwide.

Novo Nordisk advised AFP that “much better than expected demand from customers” for Ozempic experienced resulted in “intermittent availability and time period inventory-outs” all around the environment.

The company’s world-wide production facilities “are now functioning 24 several hours, 7 times a week” to bridge the hole, it extra.

Medical doctors have expressed concern that men and women with diabetes may well not be ready to get keep of semaglutide simply because of the soaring demand from customers from people today in search of to get rid of pounds.

Karine Clement, an weight problems specialist at France’s INSERM health care investigate institute, said that when Wegovy does come to be readily available, it is vital that individuals closely comply with their prescription.

“It is not a magic drug,” she explained. “As is often the scenario with being overweight, it have to be accompanied with a in depth treatment strategy.”

Aspect effects

Physicians have also expressed concerns about the aspect results of semaglutide, which Faillie said have long gone beneath-reviewed.

“Neither clients nor prescribers are motivated to report” the facet outcomes, he claimed.

Nausea is the most popular aspect impact of the drug.

But Faillie explained “there are also rarer and much more serious risks this kind of as acute pancreatitis—which can arise even at decrease doses—biliary problems, and rare scenarios of severe constipation which can lead to bowel obstruction.”

He also pointed to an “enhanced threat of thyroid cancer” subsequent quite a few years of procedure.

Although the challenges were being affordable considering the added benefits for people with diabetic issues, “there are continue to uncertainties, particularly in overweight sufferers about the long term,” he reported.

“If it is utilized to shed a several kilograms, then the therapeutic reward is zero,” Faillie extra.

“That would just be beauty, while the challenges remain.”

© 2023 AFP