Researchers say they’ve uncovered a hyperlink between semaglutide — the lively ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy — and sudden imaginative and prescient loss.
The chance of growing nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION) is 4 occasions increased for diabetics on semaglutide and 7 occasions increased for individuals taking the drug to lose weight, in accordance with a new study from Massachusetts Eye and Ear, a educating hospital of Harvard Medical College.
A comparatively uncommon situation, NAION is believed to be attributable to inadequate blood move to the optic nerve head. The result’s painless however irreversible imaginative and prescient loss in a single eye. There aren’t any efficient remedies for NAION.
NAION is just not absolutely understood — and neither is the purported relationship between semaglutide and the optic nerve dysfunction.
“This research is the primary, to our information, to report an affiliation between semaglutide and NAION, though the design of our research didn’t allow question right into a causal relationship between the 2,” the researchers wrote of their findings, revealed Wednesday within the journal JAMA Ophthalmology.
The investigation started late final summer season when Mass Eye and Ear neuro-ophthalmologists observed that three sufferers of their observe had been identified with the illness in only one week. All three have been taking semaglutide.
The researchers pored over the information of greater than 17,000 Mass Eye and Ear sufferers handled within the six years since Ozempic was launched and analyzed the speed of NAION diagnoses. They recognized important danger will increase with semaglutide.
“Using these medication has exploded all through industrialized nations they usually have supplied very important advantages in some ways, however future discussions between a affected person and their doctor ought to embody NAION as a possible danger,” mentioned Dr. Joseph Rizzo, director of the Neuro-Ophthalmology Service at Mass Eye and Ear and the research’s corresponding creator.
Semaglutide was accepted by the Meals and Drug Administration in December 2017 to deal with Kind 2 diabetes and in June 2021 for grownup weight reduction.
Ozempic’s safety information warns that imaginative and prescient modifications might happen. Wegovy’s potential side effects embody imaginative and prescient modifications for individuals with Kind 2 diabetes.
These medication and similar injectable medications that mimic appetite-suppressing hormones have skyrocketed in reputation in recent times.
The researchers say they anticipate growing numbers of NAION instances associated to semaglutide medication at the same time as they acknowledge limitations of their research.
They famous that Mass Eye and Ear sufferers generally have uncommon eye ailments, the variety of NAION diagnoses recorded within the six-year research interval is comparatively small, they usually couldn’t inform if the sufferers stopped taking semaglutide.
“Our findings ought to be considered as being important however tentative, as future research are wanted to look at these questions in a a lot bigger and extra numerous inhabitants,” Rizzo mentioned.
