While they may be effective at helping millions of Americans improve their health, popular weight loss drugs have been linked to tens of thousands of trips to the emergency room.
Between 2022 and 2023, semaglutide, the active ingredient in GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy, contributed to nearly 25,000 emergency room visits in the United States. Research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention could indicate that further education is needed for patients considering these medications.
While the number seems high, it still only represents a small fraction of users of the drugs. Last year, The Dallas Express reported that roughly 12% of Americans have tried GLP-1s, or nearly 41 million people, using 2024 population estimates.
Still, in rare cases, the drugs can be linked to serious health issues, says Pieter Cohen, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
“We found that it’s very infrequent that semaglutide leads to very serious adverse events that would land a patient in the hospital, but that they do occur,” Cohen told Health.
The findings, published in April in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, found that most ER visits resulted from gastrointestinal complications, with users experiencing vomiting, stomach pain, nausea, and diarrhea. In some cases, people went to the hospital because of allergic reactions or low blood sugar.
A small number of patients were found to have pancreatitis, and four individuals out of the tens of thousands were diagnosed with biliary disease, a condition impacting the gallbladder.
Notably, around 9% of the ER visits were linked to medication errors, implying that a gap in patient education may be present.
“Clinicians could counsel patients when initiating semaglutide about the potential for severe gastrointestinal adverse effects and adjust coprescribed antidiabetic medications to decrease hypoglycemia risk,” the authors of the study wrote, per The Independent.
“Additionally, when evaluating patients with new-onset gastrointestinal symptoms or hypoglycemia, clinicians could consider recent semaglutide use.”