Poisoning from weight-loss meds double as off-prescription Ozempic, Saxenda use rises
The number of poisonings caused by weight-loss medication has doubled in the past year. This year, the National Poison Information Center (NVIC) has already received 105 reports, compared to 55 by October 2024. In all of 2024, there were 75 poisoning cases. The poisonings occurred after using weight-loss meds like Ozempic and Saxenda, and almost all involve “misuse” - obtaining the medications without a doctor’s prescription, AD reports.
The reports often concern nausea and vomiting, but also stomach and intestinal problems. The actual number of cases is likely much higher. The NVIC doesn’t hear about people who don’t go to the doctor, and doctors aren’t obliged to report poisonings.
“Things like nausea and vomiting may seem minor, but some people are so dehydrated that they end up in the emergency room,” Dylan de Lange of the Poison Control Center told AD. And because these drugs are being used on an increasingly large scale, rare but serious side effects are increasingly emerging, De Lange said. “Think of liver inflammation, acute kidney failure, rhabdomyolysis, and even inflammation of the eye’s blood vessels, which can cause blindness.”
Weight-loss medicines originally developed for diabetes patients - semaglutide, liraglutide, dulaglutide, and tirzepatide - are used on an increasingly large scale. According to figures from the Pharmaceutical Key Figures Foundation, which monitors drug use in the Netherlands, these medicines were prescribed 334,000 times in the second quarter of 2025, compared to 167,000 two years earlier. It is impossible to know how many people are using these medications without a prescription.
