More poisonings with weight loss drugs last year
The number of people poisoned by the incorrect use of weight loss medication is on the rise in the Netherlands. Last year, the National Poison Information Center (NVIC) received 75 reports of poisoning symptoms from healthcare providers, compared to 41 a year earlier, the Volkskrant reports.
Most people suffered from abdominal pain, nausea, and vomiting. In 29 cases, the people involved had started taking weight loss drugs without a prescription. Several people ended up in the emergency room with dehydration symptoms, among other things.
The majority of poisoning cases involved semaglutide, a substance that lowers blood sugar and suppresses the appetite. Semaglutide, registered under the brand names Ozempic, Wegovy, and Rybelsus, was developed as a medicine for people with type 2 diabetes, but also proved effective for weight loss.
Last year, doctors in the Netherlands prescribed weight loss medication to around 120,000 people. So a relatively small group experienced symptoms of poisoning. Doctors are still concerned because they believe that not all poisoning cases are reported.
“What we receive is the tip of the iceberg,” Dylan de Lange, an intensive care toxicologist at UMC Utrecht and head of the NVIC, told the Volkskrant. “Healthcare providers are not obliged to report a poisoning if they suspect it. So we do not hear about many poisonings.”
What worries him most is that 29 of the 75 poisonings involved people who started using weight loss drugs without a prescription. “So there is a lot of unskilled use of illegally obtained medication. People get something from the internet, see something on Instagram, and then use drugs they do not understand. That brings with it the risk of an incorrect dosage, or an incorrect frequency - once a day instead of once a week.”
