10,000 patients have filed ‘gastro’ claims against Ozempic, Mounjaro drug makers

Novo Nordisk is taking heat for allegedly downplaying the side effects of its popular weight loss drug.

Shedding pounds is tough, so it’s no wonder Americans invest billions of dollars every year in the quest to achieve a healthy body composition.

But this January, gym-goers and diet gurus may notice that the usual crowd of New Year’s resolutioners has shrunk compared to previous years. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably know why: Ozempic.

Ozempic, a product of Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk, first hit the U.S. market in 2017 after the FDA approved it for diabetes treatment. Its active ingredient, semaglutide, regulates insulin levels and lowers blood sugar by mimicking an intestinal hormone that tells the brain we’re full. With Ozempic, the stomach empties into the small intestine more slowly, which ultimately suppresses appetite.

It didn’t take long for doctors to discover that weight loss was a handy side effect of the diabetes medication, and in 2021 the FDA approved a weight loss-specific version of the drug under the name Wegovy.

After that, Ozempic and Wegovy were off to the races, receiving celebrity endorsements for their ability to reduce a person’s weight by an average of 15%, according to clinical trials. Sensing opportunity, American pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly used a similar intestinal hormone to manufacture its own pair of diabetes and weight-loss drugs under the names Mounjaro and Zepbound, respectively. In the final three months of 2022, more than 9 million Americans received prescriptions for Ozempic and similar drugs, the Washington Post reported.

Ozempic isn’t without side effects, however, and several patients who have experienced severe complications from the drug are now suing Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly on allegations that the pharmaceutical companies misled doctors on the drugs’ potential risks.

In August, Morgan & Morgan filed a lawsuit against Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly on behalf of plaintiff Jaclyn Bjorklund, who alleged that Ozempic and Mounjaro put her in the hospital after she lost teeth due to extreme vomiting. Both companies have disputed Bjorklund’s claims, although a federal judge allowed some of Bjorklund’s claims against Novo Nordisk to go forward in December.

In a more extreme case, an Australian woman died after taking Ozempic to slim down ahead of her daughter’s wedding, “60 Minutes Australia” reported in November, although the woman’s death certificate listed acute gastrointestinal illness as the cause.

Morgan & Morgan told U.S. District Judge James D. Cain of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana that the law firm is investigating more than 10,000 claims against the pharmaceutical companies. In a December interview with Reuters, litigator Paul Pennock upped that figure to 13,000.

Some claimants complained of gastroparesis, or complications from the stomach emptying too slowly into the small intestine—for them, Ozempic worked too well, the law firm said. Other purported side effects include gastroenteritis—inflammation of the stomach and intestines that may cause nausea—as well as vomiting, fever, headaches and chronic dehydration.

Since Bjorklund’s August lawsuit, plaintiffs have filed more than 41 lawsuits against the drugmakers in 17 federal courts, according to Miller & Zois’ Lawsuit Information Center.

For their part, Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly have claimed that the risks of their drugs were well-established in product labeling, although plaintiffs have noted that such labels don’t discuss side effects such as gastroparesis and gastroenteritis.

Despite the litigation, the companies stand to make untold billions of dollars off of the drugs. Since June 4, 2021—the date the FDA announced it had approved Wegovy for weight management—the company’s stock price has risen from $40.48 to over $100. Over the counter, U.S. customers pay $1,300 monthly for the injections, Reuters reported, and two-thirds of U.S. adults are overweight or obese. Globally, 760 million people are obese, Novo Nordisk told investors regarding its target market.

While the fate of Ozempic and its contemporaries remains to be seen, the pharmaceutical industry has been wrong about miracle weight loss drugs before.

In the 1980s, Dr. Michael Weintraub of the University of Rochester combined two somewhat ineffective (but FDA-approved) diet drugs, fenfluramine and phentermine. By pairing an appetite suppressant with an amphetamine, Weintraub found that people who weighed roughly 200 pounds lost 30 pounds over the course of four years while taking fen-phen, as compared to weight gain for a control group.

After Weintraub published his findings in 1992, doctors began prescribing the diet drug duo, despite the fact that the health effects of taking the drugs together hadn’t been studied.

Related: Novo Nordisk hit with a surge of Ozempic ‘paralyzed stomach’ lawsuits

American Home Products’ subsidiary Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories then approached the FDA with a proposal to increase the drugs’ effectiveness by substituting fenfluramine for a more powerful substance called dexfenfluramine. Despite considering dexflenfluramine’s known propensity for increasing a person’s risk of heart disease, the FDA approved the new drug in 1996, figuring that the benefits of reducing the obesity epidemic outweighed the risks.

Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for grave side-effects to occur. In 1997, the Mayo Clinic discovered heart valve defects in fen-phen users, and American Home Products ultimately paid $3.75 billion to settle a class action filed by fen-phen patients who experienced heart issues.

Gregg Goldfarb, an experienced Miami trial attorney, has a 25-year history of complex litigation, winning millions for clients in areas such as whistleblower litigation and civil rights