2023-11-28 19:17:06
According to Lebanese health authorities, eleven people suffered from dangerous hypoglycemia in Lebanon this year, including one who had to be hospitalized, following injecting themselves with suspected falsified versions of Ozempic, a drug from Novo Nordisk for the treatment of diabetes. .
A director at Lebanon’s public health ministry, Rita Karam, said officials suspected the drugs were fake following discovering the doses were different from those calibrated for authentic Ozempic injector pens.
The explosion in demand for Ozempic and other weight-loss drugs, including Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro and Novo’s Wegovy, is fueling a global wave of counterfeit versions, last month showed Archyde.com interviews with law enforcement, anti-counterfeiting and public health officials.
Counterfeits of Ozempic have already been discovered in at least 17 countries, including the United Kingdom, Germany, Egypt and Russia. Several of them have issued warnings to pharmacies and consumers to be vigilant once morest counterfeits, because it is not clear what they actually contain.
Karam said the ministry had begun investigating all 11 cases, but the source and batch numbers of the drugs in question had not been identified in most cases, making it difficult to determine what the drugs were. victims had been able to take.
Three of the people who took the suspected fake Ozempic did so to control their diabetes, while four took it to control their weight, Karam said. The other four injected the drug for an “unspecified indication.”
People with diabetes need to closely control their blood sugar levels, which they can do with the help of various medications, including Ozempic. When blood sugar, or glucose levels, become too low, they may suffer from hypoglycemia, the symptoms of which may include headaches or dizziness and may progress to loss of consciousness or seizures.
The Lebanese Ministry of Public Health issued two recalls of Ozempic in January 2023, according to its website. No cases of potentially counterfeit Ozempic have been reported in Lebanon in 2022, Karam said.
Novo Nordisk declined to comment on the Lebanese cases.
More than a quarter of Lebanese adults are obese, according to 2017 figures from the World Obesity Federation. Obesity is closely linked to type 2 diabetes, which is by far the most common form of the disease.
Data from the International Diabetes Federation shows that almost 9% of adults in Lebanon had diabetes in 2021, compared to almost 14% in the United States.
Karam said Ozempic is neither purchased nor provided by the Ministry of Public Health.
Novo Nordis’ weight loss drug Wegovy, which contains the same active ingredient – semaglutide – as Ozempic, was found to help patients lose an average of 15% of their weight in a late-stage trial.
The race to supply this powerful weight-loss molecule has led to shortages of Ozempic in several countries, including Britain, Germany, Belgium and the United States.
A source familiar with anti-counterfeiting efforts told Archyde.com last month that markets where sales of fake weight-loss drugs were most prevalent included Lebanon and other Middle Eastern countries.
Several people have been hospitalized in Austria for hypoglycemia following taking potentially counterfeit versions of Ozempic. That country’s health safety regulator said side effects indicated the product contained insulin instead of semaglutide.
Last month, Belgium’s medicines regulator said it had seized counterfeit versions of Ozempic whose injector pens contained insulin.
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