Poison centers have seen an increase in calls of nearly 1,500%.
Across the United States, poison control centers have reported a steep increase in calls related to a certain weight loss drug.
Some patients have even needed to be hospitalized for severe nausea, vomiting and stomach pain.
Luckily, their cases seem to have resolved after they were given intravenous fluids and medications to control nausea.
In 2017, semaglutide was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration.
Semaglutide is an injected medication used for diabetes and weight loss, with some people reporting symptoms related to accidental overdoses.
From the month of January through November, the America’s Poison Centers reports nearly 3,000 calls involving semaglutide, which is an increase of more than 15-fold since 2019.
In 94% of these calls, the weight loss medication was the only substance reported.
In most of the calls, people reported dosing errors, said Dr. Kait Brown, clinical managing director of the association.
“Oftentimes, it’s a person who maybe accidentally took a double dose or took the wrong dose,” Brown said of the issues being reported.
You have probably heard of the newly-popular drug before, sold as Ozempic when used for diabetes and Wegovy when used for weight loss.
Even when used as directed by a doctor, people can have stomach and bowel side effects, which includes nausea, vomiting, and constipation–especially when they start the drugs.
After a number of celebrities began embracing Ozempic on social media as a way to lose weight throughout 2022, demand overwhelmed the supply.
It went into shortage in the FDA’s database in March 2022, which opened the door for certain qualified pharmacies to make compounded versions.
Unfortunately, the compounded versions of semaglutide are often different from the patented drug.
Many contain semaglutide salts called semaglutide sodium and semaglutide acetate.
The FDA says the salt forms of the drug have not been tested and approved to be safe and effective the way the patented form of the medication has, and so they don’t qualify for the compounding exemption in the law for drugs in shortage.
In other cases, the compounded versions are sold in unapproved dosages.
In response to this, the FDA has sent letters to at least two online sellers warning them to stop.
Drugmaker Novo Nordisk has sued to stop six medical spas, medical clinics and weight loss clinics from selling knock-off versions.
But these compounded versions are popular because they may cost less out-of-pocket, especially if the treatment isn’t covered by insurance.
In June, the FDA warned the public against taking compounded versions of the medication if the prescription forms were available.
The agency said it had received adverse event reports after people used compounded versions of the drug.
Brown said, according to the poison control centers, the reported symptoms don’t allow them to know whether the calls stem from the patented drugs or the compounded versions.
Still, some state poison center directors say they believe that compounded versions are behind many of the calls.
Dr. Joseph Lambson, director of the New Mexico Poison and Drug Information Center, detailed what happened to three people who called the Utah Poison Control hotline, which saw calls related to semaglutide nearly quadruple between 2021 and 2022.
He wrote about the cases in the Journal of the American Pharmacy Association, saying that two of the callers had accidentally taken 10 times the standard dose of the drug.
“We were getting reports of people giving themselves doses we had never heard of before,” Lambson said. “That’s kind of what sparked our interest” in tracking the calls.
The name-brand drugs are sold in pre-filled pens. Patients dial to the correct dose and click to inject, so it’s harder to make mistakes.
Compounded versions, however, typically come in multidose glass vials, and patients draw their own doses into syringes, causing many of these problems.
“This is where we see a lot of errors. They end up drawing too much,” Lambson said.
