Health
Ozempic Suicide Debate Stoked by Study Into Potential Link
- Authors urge caution on Ozempic for people with depression
- Other doctors call information in study weak, inconclusive
Ozempic injection pens at the Novo Nordisk production facilities in Hillerod, Denmark.
Photographer: Carsten Snejbjerg/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
A new study that found evidence of a higher rate of suicidal thoughts among patients taking Novo Nordisk A/S’s popular weight-loss and diabetes drugs is adding to a debate among doctors about the drugs’ safety.
The study published Tuesday in JAMA Network Open is the first to mine the World Health Organization’s global database of suspected drug side effects for reports of suicidal thinking in patients who have taken the drugs. It found a bigger proportion of such reports from patients who’d taken semaglutide, the drug Novo markets as Ozempic for diabetes and Wegovy for weight loss, than from those who took other medicines.