- The FDA has warned that overdoses have occurred with combined semaglutide injections, which include the weight-loss drugs Wegovy and Ozempic.
- The FDA said confusion among both patients and healthcare professionals has led to people self-injecting the wrong dose.
- Side effects of taking too much semaglutide include severe nausea, severe vomiting, and severe hypoglycemia (low blood sugar levels).
(News Nation) — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is warning that people are taking too many combination medications. Semaglutide injectionThis includes the weight loss drugs Wegovi and Ozempic.
The FDA-approved drug comes in the form of a pre-filled injection pen or oral tablet, but compounded semaglutide products Widely available on the market.
The agency said compounded drugs are: FDA approved versionand should only be used for patients whose “medical needs cannot be met by existing FDA-approved medications.”
The FDA said confusion among both patients and health care providers has led to patients self-injecting the wrong dose. In some cases, patients have mismeasured the dose of injectable medication from the vial or misunderstood how the multi-dose vials work.
In other cases, healthcare providers themselves miscalculate medication dosages.
“Patients may not have been familiar with drawing medication from a vial into a syringe and may have confused different units of measurement (e.g., milliliters, milligrams, ‘units’), which may have led to medication errors,” the agency said.
The FDA also said health care professionals should be “vigilant” about the different concentrations of formulated semaglutide and, if unsure, should contact their compounder for help calculating the correct dosage of the drug they prescribe or administer.
The majority of reported adverse events were related to patients taking more than the prescribed dose from a multi-dose vial: these patients self-administered 5 to 20 times the intended dose.
In some cases, patients were instructed to use a U-100 1 milliliter insulin syringe to inject as little as 5 units (0.05 milliliters) of insulin, but patients accidentally injected 50 units.
In one case, a patient reported receiving unclear instructions from their health care provider and turned to the internet instead.
“In one reported case, a patient had difficulty obtaining clear dosage instructions from the telehealth provider who prescribed their compounded semaglutide, so the patient searched online for medical advice and ended up taking five times the intended dose,” the FDA wrote.
Medication errors by healthcare professionals have also occurred: in one case, a healthcare professional intended to administer 5 units but prescribed 25 units; in another, a healthcare professional prescribed 20 units instead of 2; and another healthcare professional using the same medication unintentionally self-administered 10 times the dosage.
Side effects of taking too much semaglutide include severe nausea, severe vomiting, and severe hypoglycemia (low blood sugar levels).
