In Norway, the sale of Ozempic to people with weight loss as an aim is stopped. The drug is reserved for people with diabetes.
Even in Sweden, the prescription of the medicine has skyrocketed, but there are still no plans to ban sales to people other than diabetes patients.
The popular diabetes drug Ozempic may no longer be sold to people who use the medication for weight loss in Norway. The ban is a consequence of a new rationing law, which was hammered out in the Storting just over two weeks ago.
– We have two goals with these measures. One is to ensure that patients with diabetes receive the drugs. The second is to get control over society’s expenses, says chief physician at the Directorate for Medicines (DMP) Sigurd Hortemo to NRK.
Among other things, it is overconsumption that has led to a shortage of Ozempic in Norwegian warehouses. The drug has become a bestseller among people who want to lose weight.
Strongly increased sales
The overconsumption is a result of the huge increase in the use of Ozempic. The Danish drug leads to a decrease in appetite, and many people therefore use the drug to lose weight.
In Norway, around 40,000 packages of Ozempic, with weight loss as its purpose, have been sold this year. The Norwegian state has thus been forced to import diabetes drugs from abroad, which has cost the country approximately NOK 1.2 billion.
In Sweden, over 45,000 packs of Ozempic have been sold to people without benefits for the drug so far this year, according to the E-health authority. In principle, only diabetes patients have the prescription medicine within the Swedish pharmaceutical benefit today.
There are still no plans to ban the sale of the drug to patients without benefit in Sweden, but the Swedish Medicines Agency has appealed to doctors not to prescribe Ozempic except to diabetic patients.
Link to eye disease
In addition to the current shortage of the drug in Norway, a new study has shown that the active substance in Ozempic, semaglutide, may be connected to an unusual eye disease, according to Life Science Sweden.
It is an American observational study that includes 16,827 patients. The study found that the proportion of patients suffering from the eye disease NAION was five times greater among those taking semaglutide for type 2 diabetes than among patients taking other types of diabetes medication.
The manufacturer behind Ozempic questions the study and believes that the data it is based on is not sufficient.
