Americans are reportedly accidentally overdosing on weight-loss drugs, causing reports to poison centers across the United States to increase 15-fold.
The drugs that people are using include semaglutide, which is an injected medication that is used primarily for diabetes and weight loss. Some people have already reported symptoms related to these accidental overdoses.
Increased Reports to Poison Centers
Some have also had to be hospitalized for severe nausea, vomiting, and stomach pain. However, these cases seem to have resolved after the patients were given intravenous fluids and medications to control nausea.
The America's Poison Centers reported nearly 3,000 calls in relation to semaglutide from January through November, which is an increase of more than 1,500% since 2019. Officials added that in 94% of the calls, the medication was the only substance that was reported.
Additionally, the clinical managing director of the association, Dr. Kait Brown said that in the majority of the cases, people were reporting dosing errors. She noted that more often than not, the cases involved a person who accidentally took a double dose or took the wrong dose, as per CNN.
The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved semaglutide in 2017 and it is sold as Ozempic when used for diabetes and Wegovy when used for weight loss. Even when the drug is used as directed by a medical professional, people can have stomach and bowel side effects.
After Hollywood celebrities began to openly embrace Ozempic on social media last year as a means to lose weight, the demand for the drug skyrocketed and overwhelmed the supply. It was reported to have gone into shortage in the FDA's database in March 2022, which caused certain qualified pharmacies to make compounded versions.
Semaglutide's compounded versions are often different from the patented drug, many of which contain semaglutide salts known as semaglutide sodium and semaglutide acetate. The FDA also noted that the salt forms of the drug have not yet been tested and approved to be safe and effective in the same way as the patented drug has been.
Accidental Overdosing on Weight-Loss Drugs
The director of the New Mexico Poison and Drug Information Center, Dr. Joseph Lambson studied three people who called the Utah Poison Control hotline and reported experiencing adverse symptoms after they took a semaglutide medication. It was found that two of the patients accidentally took 10 times the standard dosage, according to People.
In a June 2023 report that was published in the Journal of the American Pharmacy Association, Lambson noted that the compounded versions typically come in multi-dose glass vials and require people to draw their own doses into syringes.
The medical professional added that these versions of the drug lack the safety features provided by the pre-filled pens that are used by the name-brand makers of the original medication.
The director of clinical services at the Maryland Poison Center, James Leonard said that people should just follow the dosing titration and increase it as is recommended. He noted that they would then be more likely to reduce the side effects and be able to tolerate the drug and keep taking it, said WTOP News.
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