Your support helps us tell the story
As a White House correspondent, I ask hard questions and want important answers.
Your support allows me to stand in the chamber and speak for transparency and accountability. Without your support, I would not have the resources to take on those in power.
Your donation allows us to continue our important work of keeping you informed every step of the way leading up to the November election.
Andrew Feinberg
White House Correspondent
A woman is suing the manufacturer of the weight-loss drug Ozempic, claiming that she had to have her colon removed due to complications from taking the drug.
Juanita Gant, 62, said that with a family history of diabetes and weighing 242 pounds, doctors found her to be a suitable candidate and prescribed Novo Nordisk’s Wegovi and Ozempic.
“I was fine,” she said. CBS Morning On Thursday. “I enjoyed not having to worry about food cravings. I mean, I don’t have food cravings. I just felt like I was doing something good for myself.”
However, it would not be until several months later, in October 2023, that she experienced frightening medical complications, which she claims were side effects of the medication.
Gant now claims the drug’s packaging did not adequately warn people about potential side effects and is seeking an unspecified amount in damages in his lawsuit.
Her mother said her husband found her unconscious on the floor and she was rushed to hospital, where doctors determined part of her large intestine had died and needed to be removed.
He added that Gant suffered a cardiac arrest while recovering from surgery.
She now lives with an ileostomy bag that collects waste from an opening in her abdomen that surgeons created by grafting part of her intestine onto her skin.
“We were never informed that this was a possibility,” she claimed.
Independent Novo Nordisk and Gantt have been contacted for comment.
The Danish pharmaceutical company makes two of the three FDA-approved semaglutide weight-loss products sold in the United States: Ozempic and Wegovy.
Semaglutide is a hormone naturally secreted by the human stomach when you eat, and is the active ingredient in both Ozempic and Wegovy injections.
According to the Food and Drug Administration, the drug works by encouraging the body to release insulin (thereby lowering blood sugar levels) and, in high doses, can also “interact with parts of the brain that suppress appetite and signal fullness.”
The use of diabetes medications for weight loss is on the rise as celebrities openly admit to using them to lose weight.
In an interview people In 2023, Oprah Winfrey revealed that she was taking weight-loss drugs “as a tool to manage weight gain and loss,” but did not reveal which drugs they were.
Last year, Sharon Osbourne admitted to using Ozempic. Guardian In February, she announced she’d lost 42 pounds, but was “too skinny.”
Ozempic made headlines last year when some patients claimed that taking the drug caused them to develop gastroparesis (stomach paralysis), a condition in which the digestive process slows to potentially harmful levels.
2022 Journal Articles Drug Design, Development and Treatmentdescribed gastrointestinal side effects of semaglutide as “common” and listed constipation, nausea, diarrhoea and vomiting, which may not only be isolated side effects but also symptoms of “delayed gastric emptying” according to the American Society of Anesthesiologists.
There are also concerns that gangs are using false batch numbers to distribute dangerous counterfeit versions of the popular drug around the world.
