While the weight loss medication Ozempic may help users lose weight and get healthier, there are new concerns about the drug potentially causing depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts.
Even though Ozempic has not been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for weight loss, thousands of people have started to take the drug after users reported shedding pounds while on it.
Thanks to social media, primarily TikTok, the drug has become increasingly popular, flying off shelves and being in short supply for most of this year.
However, users have started to report mental health problems from taking Ozempic and related drugs, leading to drug regulators launching investigations.
Over the summer, the European Medicines Agency announced that it was looking into the risk of thoughts of self-harm and suicidal thoughts with the use of Ozempic.
The regulator shared that as of July 11, it had received and begun evaluating more than 150 reports of such side effects.
While the FDA has yet to launch any investigations into the reports of mental health-related side effects, it is monitoring the situation.
“We continue to conclude that the benefits of these medications outweigh their risks when they are used according to the FDA-approved labeling,” FDA spokesperson Chanapa Tantibanchachai said in an email to NPR.
Tantibanchachai added in the email that the weight-loss drug Wegovy, which uses the same active ingredient as Ozempic, semaglutide, has a warning on its label about the risk of suicidal thoughts.
In a report from NPR, the media outlet found that there were 489 reports of patients experiencing anxiety, depression, or suicidal thoughts while taking drugs with semaglutide. The reports were made with the FDA's adverse event reporting system or FAERS.
In 96 of the reports, the patient expressed having suicidal thoughts, and five of them died. It is not known if Ozempic or any other drug resulted in the mental health problems.
Health experts have shared that the cases in which people experienced these issues are rare, with some doctors reporting never seeing anyone on Ozempic having side effects.
“As far as I’m aware, I have not seen it once in my patients,” Dr. Eduardo Grunvald, an obesity medicine physician at UC San Diego Health, shared with NBC News last month.
Experts have also expressed that the FAERS system is not designed to answer concerns about side effects, only to flag them.
“It’s a passive surveillance system where people like you and me – patients, caregivers, medical providers – can report a safety event if they feel that that patient has suffered an adverse outcome from a drug that they had been on,” Rishi Desai, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School who studies drug side effects, shared with NPR.
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