Hundreds of Americans have joined a multi-state lawsuit claiming the makers of Ozempic and Mounjaro caused life-threatening stomach paralysis.
The lawsuit was filed against Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, pharmaceutical giants that have raked in billions thanks to blockbuster drugs for diabetes and obesity.
Dana Filmore, an Ohio native and grandmother of seven, can no longer eat solid food and has to mix her meals. Jacqueline Barber of Louisville vomited so much that she became dangerously malnourished.
Bob Tuttle, an oil rig worker from Tennessee, was forced to quit his job because the stomach pain was unbearable. And Philadelphia native Debbie Kirtz believed she would never leave the hospital alive.
They and many others argue in the lawsuit that Lilly and Novo failed to warn their millions of eager customers about the very real risk of serious gastrointestinal injuries, including gastric paralysis, gallbladder problems, colon removal and more, as well as misleading have made statements about the safety of the medicines.
Dana Filmore of Columbus, Ohio, now lives on a diet of protein shakes and Jell-O. Her gastric paralysis related to Ozempic prevents her from eating solid food
Dana Filmore, a 55-year-old diabetic, was uncomfortable with the prospect of pricking herself with a needle every week when her doctor suggested she try Ozempic to control her type 2 diabetes.
For about two years, the drug did what it was approved for: lowered her blood sugar. But in the last six months of taking it, severe nausea started to hit. It gradually got worse and she had to work through her vacation time to recover.
It got to the point where she became afraid of eating solid food because a few bites would send her to the bathroom.
She told me USA today: ‘The solids are very difficult for me. My body just rejects it.”
She was recently diagnosed with gastroparesis, or stomach paralysis.
It causes the muscle contractions in the stomach to become too weak to digest food and pass it to the intestines, causing food to stay in the stomach longer than it should.
When the stomach releases food, instead of doing so gradually and in a steady manner, the stomach empties in larger, unprocessed bursts, causing chaotic diarrhea.
Ms Filmore, who had to apologize minutes after starting a meal, said: ‘You never know what the cause will be.’
It has even disrupted her 35-minute commute to work, where she manages a team of technicians at a mechanical company.
She said, “Halfway through work I have to stop at a restaurant or gas station. My stomach doesn’t give me much time to really decide where I’m going.”
Her diet now consists mainly of protein shakes and Jell-O. It’s the only meal plan that keeps her from running to the bathroom.
In Louisville, Kentucky, Jacqueline Barber, another plaintiff in the case, was also diagnosed with gastroparesis that threatened her life.
She was prescribed Ozempic in 2021 for her type 2 diabetes, but spent every night on the couch next to a garbage can for more than a year to control her uncontrollable vomiting.
The 48 year old said: ‘To lie on the couch and throw up non-stop, barely manage to walk, go anywhere, it’s very depressing.’
The only things she could keep down were peanuts, peanut butter crackers and peanut butter cookies.
“I ended up losing 140 pounds. I was only about 70 pounds, couldn’t walk or get around, couldn’t get off the couch. Nobody knew what was going on. Nobody put the two together.”
Jacqueline Barber of Louisville, Kentucky was diagnosed with gastric paralysis after taking Ozempic to control her diabetes
Mrs. Barber had to be placed on a feeding tube.
“My stomach was numb,” she said. “I couldn’t tolerate anything.”
Meanwhile, Tennessee native Bob Tuttle, 60, was 60 miles offshore on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico when he had to be flown over in a helicopter to the emergency room after four days of not keeping any food down.
Within a week he was diagnosed with gastric paralysis, linked to the Ozempic he was prescribed in 2018.
Mr Tuttle, a safety and environmental consultant on the platform, was healthy and fit – a necessity for his job, which involved a lot of climbing stairs and running around.
The drug successfully managed his A1C levels and kept his diabetes in check. But gradually he started losing weight without intending to. He became increasingly tired and later seriously nauseous.
He received his diagnosis just a few days after leaving the oil rig: “Gastroparesis, in layman’s terms, is nothing more than the inability of the stomach to process solids or liquids that one ingests.
“My stomach processed some of the liquids but none of the solids during the tests they performed on me at the hospital.”
Bob Tuttle of Tennessee became so ill from gastric paralysis that he had to quit his job as a safety consultant on an oil rig
Mr Tuttle had to be flown off the platform in the Gulf of Mexico after being unable to keep food down for four days. Within a week he was diagnosed with gastric paralysis
Now off the medication and no longer chronically nauseous, Mr. Tuttle still had to quit his job to deal with the illness.
Mr Tuttle has joined the lawsuit against the companies.
Novo and Lilly have denied allegations that their drugs cause gastric paralysis.
A spokesperson for Novo Nordisk said they are unfounded and that the risks of semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic, are clearly stated on the label.
They added: ‘Novo Nordisk stands behind the safety and efficacy of all of our GLP-1 medicines when used as indicated and when taken under the care of a licensed healthcare provider.’
Ozempic’s FDA approved warning label mentions ‘gastrointestinal side effects’, and none of the side effects listed include gastroparesis.
Nearly 22,000 adverse reactions to Ozempic have been recorded in the FDA’s voluntary adverse event reporting system. Gastrointestinal disorders such as gastric paralysis make up 43 percent of these reports.
That does not mean that all 22,000 injuries were actually caused by the drugs. And considering that millions of people take the drugs every day, doctors say the side effects of the injections are quite safe.
Now that a few years have passed since Ozempic was introduced for people with diabetes, researchers are better able to track the long-term effects of using the drug beyond helping people lose some weight.
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Researchers from the University of British Columbia studied a series of health records of people taking liraglutide, another diabetes drug, semaglutide, and another drug called bupropion-naltrexone between 2006 and 2020.
The researchers found that people who took semaglutide for weight loss, which works by binding to GLP-1 receptors in the pancreas and brain to reduce appetite and control cravings, were 9.1 times more likely to develop pancreatitis ( inflammation of the pancreas), a condition that sometimes requires surgery.
In addition, semaglutide users were 4.22 times more likely to develop intestinal obstruction, a potentially life-threatening condition, and had a 3.67 times higher risk of developing gastroparesis (often called ‘gastric paralysis’), which restricts the movement of food from the intestine is slowed down or stopped. stomach to the small intestine.
In three studies into the effects of GLP-1 agonists – a class to which Ozempic and Wegovy belong – on gastrointestinal health, researchers examined real-world data from patients prescribed one of the drugs between 2021 and 2022. They compared these with a control group of diabetes patients or obese people who had not been prescribed the drugs.
Patients taking a GLP-1 were 66 percent more likely to be diagnosed with gastroparesis than those not taking the drugs.