Ozempic and other weight-loss drugs are linked to more than 160 deaths in the US, a report says. (Image: iStock)
According to media reports, weight loss injections are like Ozempic and Wegovy have been linked to 162 deaths in the United States. The data covers the past 6 years. These victims have been recorded in the FDA’s FAERS (FDA Adverse Event Reporting System) database. For the uninitiated, this database stores reports of adverse reactions, safety issues, and complaints about the quality of drugs once they are on the market.
For those who don’t know, Ozempic was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat diabetes in 2017. In 2021, another drug with Ozempic as the main ingredient was given the go-ahead, but this time it was to combat obesity. It was called Wegovy. The injectable suddenly went viral when Elon Musk revealed the use of Wegovy during an interview.
Before you get confused, both Ozempic and Wegovy are the same drug, semaglutide, just administered in slightly different doses. Shortly after Musk spoke out about it, other A-listers like Oprah Winfrey, Tracy Morgan, Amy Schumer, Lauren Manzo, Emily Simpson, and Jessica Simpson admitted to jumping on the Ozempic weight loss bandwagon.
While none of the deaths have been shown to have been explicitly caused by semaglutide injections, there are reports that they were a factor in the fatalities.
Meanwhile, last year, an Australian woman who took Ozempic to lose a few pounds before her daughter’s wedding died of a gastrointestinal illness. Her family claims the drug was the cause.
Since 2018, the FDA system has recorded about 62,000 reactions to weight-loss drugs like Ozempic. Most of these reactions were recorded in the past two years, after semaglutide gained popularity. Within the FAERS database, a total of 10,000 reactions were classified as “serious” — meaning the patient was hospitalized or suffered a life-threatening event.
Meanwhile, in March 2024, Wegovy became “the first weight-loss drug that was also approved to help prevent life-threatening cardiovascular events in adults with cardiovascular disease and obesity or overweight.” Ozempic warns of several side effects on its website, including pancreatic inflammation, low blood sugar, kidney problems, severe allergic reactions, gallbladder problems, and more.
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