A new study that found evidence of a higher rate of suicidal thoughts among patients taking Novo Nordisk’s popular weight loss and diabetes drugs is adding to a debate among doctors about the drugs’ safety.
The study published this week in JAMA Network Open is the first to mine the World Health Organisation’s global database of suspected drug side effects for reports of suicidal thinking in patients who have taken the drugs. It found a bigger proportion of such reports from patients who had taken semaglutide, the drug Novo markets as Ozempic for diabetes and Wegovy for weight loss, than from those who took other medicines.
