A small percentage of patients on injectable weight loss drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy experienced permanent vision loss, according to a new study.
The report, published Thursday in the medical journal JAMA Ophthalmology, found that five out of 25,330 patients studied, or less than 0.02%, of those who took Ozempic and Wegovy, also known as GLP-1 drugs, developed non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy, or NAION, a sudden loss of vision in one eye.
The occurrence is rare, according to both the report and a Long Island doctor, but is also the subject of multiple lawsuits, including two filed by Long Island patients who allege they developed vision loss after using semaglutide, the main ingredient in GLP-1 drugs.
The study, however, also noted that semaglutide was not associated with an increased risk of eye disorders or diabetic retinopathy.
WHAT NEWSDAY FOUND
- New research has linked GLP-1 injectable drugs to a rare occurrence of sudden vision loss.
- Novo Nordisk said its own assessment of the data is that there is no proof that their drugs cause vision loss.
- A Long Island-based law firm has filed lawsuits on behalf of individuals, including Long Islanders, who claim they lost their vision due to the drugs.
“Despite the fact that an association between semaglutide treatment and NAION was found, current evidence remains insufficient to establish definitive conclusions regarding its association with NAION,” the report said.
GLP-1 drugs were originally used to treat diabetes, but are now a popular method of weight loss, even as the drugs face concerns over affordability, insurance coverage and potential side effects, as Newsday has previously reported.
Dr. Silvana Obici, medical director of the Stony Brook Diabetes Center, said, “The risk of developing NAION so far is reported to be low, possibly well below 0.1 % over many years of follow-up.”
Obici, who is also the chief of the Division of Endocrinology at Stony Brook Medicine, said non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy is more common in people who are older, have diabetes or cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease. Metabolic syndrome, commonly associated with obesity, is an important risk factor for such vision loss, Obici said.
However, she said the benefits of GLP-1 drugs outweigh “the very low risk” of vision loss.
In an emailed statement to Newsday, pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, which manufactures drugs with semaglutide, said that “NAION is a very rare eye disease, and it is not an adverse drug reaction for the marketed formulations of semaglutide (Ozempic, Rybelsus and Wegovy) as per the approved labels in the U.S.”
The company said their own assessment of the data is that there is no proof that their drugs cause vision loss.
Ongoing lawsuits
Jason Goldstein, a Port Washington-based lawyer for Parker Waichman LLP, has filed six lawsuits in Middlesex County Superior Court in New Jersey on behalf of individuals, including two Long Island residents, who allege they suffered permanent vision loss after taking drugs containing semaglutide.
Anthony Barzyz, 75, of Malverne, stated in a lawsuit filed Monday, he began taking Ozempic in the fall of 2023 and several months later lost all vision in his right eye.
Barzyz said he thought he had a stroke and went through a battery of brain scans before being diagnosed with vision loss, which he thinks was caused by the weight loss drug, he told Newsday in an interview.
If the drug manufacturer had posted a warning label about the risk of blindness from Ozempic, he said, “I would have never taken it.”
Goldstein also represents more than 50 other clients with similar irreversible vision loss — including about half a dozen from Long Island — whose cases he is still reviewing.
Goldstein said many of his clients were prescribed the popular weight loss drug for treatment of Type 2 diabetes. But months later, he said, the patients developed severely blurred vision and were eventually diagnosed with non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy, often preventing them from continuing to work.
“And they all suffered the same type of eye injury as a result of taking this drug,” Goldstein said Monday.
Earlier this month, Parker Waichman moved to consolidate their cases, along with those of four other law firms, before a single judge. The application is still under consideration.
Additional lawsuits linking the weight loss drugs to vision loss are also proceeding in federal court.
Last month, a risk assessment committee in Europe — the equivalent of the U.S. federal government’s FDA — completed its review of several large studies and concluded that NAION is a “very rare side effect” of semaglutide that could affect roughly 1 in every 10,000 people taking the drug.
The committee is recommending that Novo Nordisk update the product label for drugs containing semaglutide to include non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy as a side effect with a frequency of “very rare.”
In recent weeks, Novo Nordisk has seen its stock price tumble to multiyear lows, following a July 29 announcement that the Danish drugmaker was slashing its sales and profit projections for 2025.
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