It\u2019s the sign of any must-have product on TikTok: the item sails through the air, caught by eager hands. The latest is Ozempic, a diet drug that has been hashtagged on the app some 350 million times. Young women smile to the camera as they catch their dose. They pull injection pens from their packets. Push the needle into their stomachs. And then share how many more pounds they hope to shed over the coming week. In recent times, the diabetes treatment began to be prescribed \u201coff-label\u201d for weight loss \u2013 and is available for purchase without a prescription. Its feverish popularity on social media has driven demand so great that there have been global shortages; it is the slimming method du jour in Hollywood too, where A-listers now pay $1,500 per month for the promise of shedding a few pounds. <\/p>\n
Ozempic \u2013 for which the generic name is semaglutide \u2013 works by mimicking a hormone that regulates appetite, by creating the feeling of fullness. The dose is administered via a weekly injection, shown to produce an average reduction of 6 to 15 per cent of their body weight over the course of a year (depending on strength). The drug made manufacturers Novo Nordisk $3.4bn in 2020 alone, with analysts predicting sales to more than double to $7.8bn \u2013 particularly when Wegovy, a 2.4mg version of Ozempic approved for NHS use reaches the UK in early 2023.<\/p>\n
In the reams of online posts, users share how their appetites have dwindled, with the falling number on the scales flashing up in multicoloured fonts. Quick waistline \u201cfixes\u201d have been around forever. But the TikTok effect is expanding their reach further and faster than ever before: an investigation by The Pharmaceutical Journal earlier this year found that the site was the \u201cworst culprit\u201d for bombarding young people with medical misinformation online. <\/p>\n
For obese patients, Ozempic \u201cworks well,\u201d says GP Simon Gordon, who has seen many of his own \u201close lots of weight and [be] able to stop medicines for blood pressure\u2026 At the moment it\u2019s helping.\u201d Although it has been effective thus far, there\u2019s reason for caution when it comes to declaring the drug a weight loss panacea \u2013 particularly given others\u2019 tumultuous past. At least 25 have been approved by medical authorities in the last six decades, only to be banned once their side effects \u2013 from heart valve damage to strokes and primary pulmonary hypertension, a potentially fatal lung condition \u2013 became clear. It is partly this chequered history that has left pharmaceutical companies side-stepping an easy goldmine. With 3.5 billion obese adults globally \u2013 rates that have trebled since 1975 \u2013 that only one drug could be prescribed in the UK between 2010 until last year speaks to those lingering fears.<\/p>\n
Between the 1930s and 1960s, it was a different story. Vast sums were being pumped into developing amphetamine-based weight-loss drugs, with Tenuate Dospan \u2013 one such pill known to cause side effects such as \u201cconfusions and hallucinations\u201d \u2013 prescribed to a certain Donald Trump in the early Eighties. Psychosis was believed to be among its longer-term issues; shorter-term ones included \u201canxiety, insomnia and delusions of grandeur\u201d.<\/p>\n
But the race for medically induced shedding reached a nadir the following decade with Fen-Phen, a pill combining fenfluramine, an appetite suppressant, and phentermine (an amphetamine akin to speed). A single study of 121 patients reported a 14.2kg average weight loss over 34 weeks, compared to 4.9kg in the placebo control group; its popularity soared to such a degree that weight loss clinics were set up just to capitalise on demand.<\/p>\n
Two years, six million patients and 18 million prescriptions later, it had become \u201ca morality tale for our times,\u201d according to medical experts, with 30 per cent of its users experiencing heart valve issues (as well as others reporting primary pulmonary hypertension, or PPH), leading to its licence being revoked. That didn\u2019t come soon enough to save the likes of Mary Linnen, a 30-year-old from Massachusetts who, trying to slim for her wedding, spent three months in hospital before dying of PPH in 1997. Tens of thousands of legal claims were filed against Wyeth, the drug\u2019s manufacturer, with $21bn set aside for payouts \u2013 a fallout so great that the US Food and Drug Administration approved no new diet pills for the following decade.<\/p>\n
Once a slimming aid gets green-lit, demand among the body-conscious can often outweigh that of those in genuine need<\/p>\n
(Getty)<\/p>\n
Fen-Phen, nor Phentermine \u2013 another amphetamine-based weight-loss drug still used in the US \u2013 were approved in the UK. But the legalities of weight loss pills aren\u2019t always a barrier to entry for those seeking quick results. Since 2013, the UK Government\u2019s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has seized more than \u00a34m of illegal diet pills in Britain, including Dinitrophenol or DNP \u2013 used to treat obesity in 1933 but later classed as a \u201ctoxic chemical\u201d. Available for purchase online, the compound has in recent years been linked to a string of deaths including father-of-one Liam Willis, 24, and 21-year-old student Eloise Parry. A 2019 study for Scotland\u2019s Food Standards Agency found that, though they knew it could kill them, 5 per cent of respondents would still take DNP in order to slim; a government survey of dieters in 2017 found that more than 40 per cent of people used diet pills knowing that there were health risks associated. Sixty per cent reported their motivation as being \u201cdesperate to lose weight\u201d, with the same number experiencing bleeding, heart problems and blurred vision due to taking weight-loss drugs.<\/p>\n
Ozempic has thus far proved itself as both safe and effective \u2013 so much so that when Dr Gordon recently suggested that one of his patients, who is currently awaiting bariatric surgery, begin taking it, the surgeon refused; the drug will likely \u201churt the careers of surgeons who specialise in obesity,\u201d he thinks. Dr Alex Miras, a consultant endocrinologist and clinical professor of medicine at Ulster University, is equally supportive of its use among patients who are dealing with health issues as a result of excess weight. But he is \u201cnot surprised it is popular\u201d in both Hollywood and across social media, noting that \u201cin the UK, the biggest prescribers of Saxenda [the other legal weight loss drug, approved last year] are cosmetic salons\u201d.<\/p>\n
Once a slimming aid gets green-lit, demand among the body-conscious can often outweigh that of those in genuine need \u2013 which, without the input of a medical professional, can significantly up the potential risks. The medication is intended for use alongside a healthy eating plan and exercise regime, but when taken solo \u2013 and then stopped \u2013 any benefits are reversed; medically suppressing appetite alone cannot fix the global obesity crisis. And there is the matter of what happens after taking the drug, too. An April paper published in Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism found that those on a 2.4mg dose of semaglutide regained two-thirds of the weight they had lost in the first year after stopping the medication, with those who had lost the most weight putting the most back on. Research has repeatedly shown the perils of yo-yo dieting, with gaining more weight than was originally lost and metabolic damage common outcomes. <\/p>\n
One recent addition to TikTok\u2019s Ozempic hashtaggers tells me that she began weekly injections five weeks ago, after her private doctor ran a series of tests to analyse her recent weight gain, and found no obvious reason. She has no particular goal on the scales, she says \u2013 \u201cit\u2019s a case of whatever I lose in six months. To be honest, I just want to give my weight loss a boost.\u201d As the millions of identical hashtags attest, she\u2019s not the only one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s the sign of any must-have product on TikTok: the item sails through the air, caught by eager hands. The latest is Ozempic, a diet drug that has been hashtagged on the app some 350 million times. Young women smile to the camera as they catch their dose. They pull injection pens from their packets. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1291,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n