This research comes from the Massachusetts Eye and Ear hospital in the USA, which is a specialized hospital for the treatment of eye, ear, nose, throat, and head and neck diseases, and is also an affiliated teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. The results indicate that there is a potential risk of NAION associated with taking a prescription for Sermorelin, but further studies are needed to evaluate the causal relationship.
On July 4th, Caixin learned from Zhao Hao, a well-known international medical journal, JAMA Ophthalmology, published a research result that taking semaglutide is associated with the risk of nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION).
Source: JAMA Ophthalmology
This study comes from Massachusetts Eye and Ear, a specialized hospital for treating eye, ear, nose, throat, and head and neck diseases, as well as an affiliated teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School.
The results show that there is a potential risk of developing NAION with semaglutide prescription, but further research is needed to evaluate the causal relationship.
Source: JAMA Ophthalmology
NAION is a clinical acute optic neuropathy that seriously endangers visual function, manifested as acute, typical unilateral and painless visual loss, ipsilateral relative afferent pupillary defect (RAPD), and optic nerve swelling (sectoral or diffuse). The pathogenesis of NAION is not yet clear. Visual function damage is mostly irreversible, and some patients eventually become blind.
The results showed that the probability of developing NAION in patients with type 2 diabetes treated with semaglutide was more than 4 times higher (4.28 times) than those treated with other types of drugs, while the probability of developing NAION in patients using semaglutide for weight loss was more than 7 times higher (7.64 times) than those using other types of weight loss drugs.
According to the paper, there were only 37 cases of NAION caused by drug use, which limited the statistical power of the study. Harvard University researchers and other experts have pointed out that these findings do not prove that the drug causes eye complications, and the results need to be confirmed by more hospitals and larger studies.
Semaglutide, developed by Novo Nordisk, is the effective ingredient in the weight loss drug "Wegovy" and the diabetes drug "Ozempic". Currently, the scientific community generally considers such drugs to be safe, but as more people use them, researchers are looking for previously unknown side effects.
Neuro-ophthalmology expert Susan Mollan said, "I don't think this is a strong enough signal to make patients stop using this drug." But Mollan pointed out that doctors should inform patients of potential risks.
Mahyar Etminan, a drug safety researcher at the University of British Columbia in Canada who did not participate in the study, said that this potential risk "should definitely be examined more closely" and that "it's a very serious situation that, if true, would change the balance between risk and benefit."
Affected by this news, Novo Nordisk's U.S. stocks fell 2.87% on Wednesday, and intraday fell nearly 5%; Eli Lilly's stock fell 0.95%, and intraday fell more than 2%.