Ozempic warning: 21 year-old woman develops deadly blood complication after ... trends now
A 21-year-old woman developed lethal toxic blood after taking a popular weight loss drug for just three weeks.
The unnamed patient, who had been injecting a medicine in the same class as Ozempic, was admitted to the hospital after two days of abdominal pain, vomiting, and diarrhea.
Blood tests revealed that she was suffering a potentially fatal condition called ketoacidosis - which happens when fat-melting proteins called ketones build up in the blood.
In small, short-lived doses, ketones are relatively harmless, and can speed up weight loss. But in large quantities, they cause the blood to become too acidic, causing catastrophic heart problems.
The patient, whose case was documented in the European Journal of Case Reports in Internal Medicine, was found to have 26 times the normal level of ketones in her blood.
An unnamed patient in Kuwait went into ketoacidosis after taking tirzepatide, the active ingredient in blockbuster weight loss drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound
The cases have been recorded in an FDA monitoring system used to track the safety of medicines used in the US, called FAERS. They are shown above in a graphic
Three weeks earlier, she started taking tirzepatide, the active ingredient in blockbuster weight loss drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound, once a week. She had lost about 11 pounds.
The complication is one in a long line of side effects linked to GLP-1 agonists like Ozempic and Mounjaro, which have also been tied to over 100 US deaths.
Normally, the body breaks down glucose, or sugar, in food and converts it into energy.
But if the body isn't getting enough, it breaks down fat stores as a backup. This chemical reaction produces ketones as a by-product.
This could be more likely in patients on GLP-1 agonists like Ozempic or Mounjaro because the medications suppress appetite, which means patients are not getting much energy from food.
Ketoacidosis is normally seen in diabetic patients, as their bodies cannot produce enough insulin -
