A 79-year-old man was forced to go without his diabetes medication after supplies were stolen by people desperate to lose weight.
John Noble, who lives in Livingston, was prescribed semaglutide, brand Ozempic, two years ago. to control your type 2 diabetes.
But her GP has now told her that she won’t get her prescription until 2024 due to an increase in demand for the weekly shot.
Ozempic helps control blood sugar levels in patients with diabetes. But it’s also been hailed as a “miracle” weight-loss drug by celebrities like Elon Musk and Jeremy Clarkson, prompting an outcry for it.
As a result, global supplies of semaglutide have been running low, leading health chiefs to warn that the lives of diabetic patients are at risk.
Noble has said he will now have difficulty managing his diabetes and will face a fee of £75 a week if he goes private.
John Noble was taking a drug called Ozempic through the NHS to control his type 2 diabetes, but was told he might have to stop until next year due to increasing demand.
Demand for Ozempic, which contains the same active ingredient, semaglutide, as the Wegovy weight-loss vaccine has increased, causing a global shortage.
Ozempic is available on the NHS as a treatment to control blood glucose levels in people with type 2 diabetes.
In May, semaglutide for weight loss was also approved under the brand name Wegovy.
However, it wasn’t until this week that the NHS and private clinics received a restricted number of doses of Wegovy.
The delay has led to an increase in “unauthorized” prescribing of Ozempic (where drugs are dispensed for a use other than their intended use), which is exacerbating global shortages of both drugs.
His GP told Mr Noble that the recent rise in popularity of semaglutide means he won’t be able to get it until next year at the earliest.
He said: ‘I’m really worried.
‘It was working fine.
“You wouldn’t have thought I had diabetes, I didn’t have any symptoms.”
Noble said he’s not sure how he’s going to manage his diabetes now.
“I’ll have to review my diet now, but when I was on Ozempic I could go on with my life as normal,” he said.
‘Obviously there were some things you couldn’t eat as a diabetic, but overall it worked very well. I got along very well with that.
“I feel like diabetics are being left out so other people can use the drug, even though it was made for us.”
Noble acknowledged that he could get a supply from a private clinic, but at £75 a dose, he balked at the expense.
“I’m just upset, this has been working really well for me and it all comes down to if you want to lose weight and you can afford it, you can have it and now there’s a shortage,” he said.
A Scottish government spokesman said: ‘We know how distressing it can be for a person when there is a shortage of a medicine they take.
It was announced on Monday that Britons would now be able to access Wegovy through the Health Service’s specialist weight management services as part of a “limited and controlled rollout”.
Wegovy and Ozempic, which contain semaglutide, work by causing the body to produce a hormone called glucagon-like peptide 1 that is released naturally from the intestines after meals.
A UK study found that people using Wegovy experienced rapid weight loss, losing 18 percent of their weight in 68 weeks. They regained two-thirds of that weight, or 12 percent of their original body weight, in the year after they stopped the weekly injections.
Experts have warned that Wegovy is not a “magic pill.” Trials have shown that users can quickly regain pounds once they stop taking it, and it can lead to side effects such as nausea, constipation, and diarrhea.
“Healthcare professionals have been notified of this supply issue and UK-wide guidelines have been published advising healthcare professionals on how to manage patients who require these medicines to ensure they continue to have access to their treatment.”
Semaglutide supply problems in the UK came to light this week when Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharmaceutical giant behind semaglutide, confirmed limited stocks of Wegovy had arrived in the UK.
It is unclear how much Wegovy has been supplied to the UK in total, nor what the split of that supply is between the NHS and private clinics.
Under NHS rules, only Brits with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or more (or a BMI of more than 27 and at least one weight-related condition) who commit to following diet and exercise plans they are eligible.
The drug, which has been shown to help users lose 15 per cent of their body weight in 68 weeks, will be distributed through specialist NHS weight management services as part of a “limited controlled launch”.
While NHS patients will receive the vaccine free of charge, those who want to do it privately will have to pay between £199 and £299, depending on the strength of the dose.
Over time, health chiefs expect Wegovy to be distributed to 50,000 NHS patients a year to help them lose weight and tackle the country’s mounting obesity bill, which costs the NHS around £6.5bn a year.
However, doctors criticized Novo Nordisk for supplying doses of Wegovy to the private sector, arguing that this limits access to more clinical patients.
Semaglutide, which is given by injection, works by mimicking the actions of the natural hormone GLP-1, which is released in the intestine after eating.
In addition to telling the pancreas to make more insulin, GLP-1 tells the brain that users feel full.
But like all medicines, semaglutide has side effects. Users have commonly complained of nausea, constipation, and diarrhea.
Wegovy was specifically approved for weight loss in the US in 2021 and the same move in the UK is expected to be a game changer in addressing the bulge in Britain.
The growing obesity epidemic in the UK has been blamed on a lack of exercise, combined with unhealthy diets.
The latest NHS data shows that 26 percent of adults in England are obese and another 38 percent are overweight but not obese.
However, pharmacists have warned people to avoid Wegovy sold online out of fear that it could cause serious harm and “damage important organs”.
These kinds of ads selling “weight loss pens” and “weight loss shots” have flooded social media in response to huge demand from Brits.
