Thousands sue over GLP-1 drugs: What patients allege

On the Wednesday, January 28, 2026, episode of The Excerpt podcast: As GLP-1 use surges, lawsuits allege blindness, stomach paralysis and more. USA TODAY Investigative Reporter Austin Fast breaks down the cases.

Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

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Dana Taylor:

A growing number of lawsuits alleged that the manufacturers of certain GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro failed to sufficiently warn of the risks of certain severe injuries. As more adverse experiences come to light, how are drug makers responding to safety concerns?

Hello and welcome to USA TODAY’s The Excerpt. I’m Dana Taylor. Today is Wednesday, January 28th, 2026. Since 2023, roughly 4,200 patients have filed lawsuits challenging the safety of GLP-1s. Joining me to discuss some of those cases and the response from drug manufacturers is USA TODAY Investigative Data Reporter Austin Fast. It’s good to have you back on The Excerpt, Austin.

Austin Fast:

Yeah, thanks for having me back.

Dana Taylor:

As you reported, the most common medical complaint by far is something known as stomach paralysis. What is that exactly, Austin? How does it affect the body?

Austin Fast:

It’s what it sounds like really. I mean, it’s when your stomach stops moving. The muscles are weakened and so it stops moving your food into the intestine so it can be digested. So what that happens is it causes people to feel full very quickly, even with just a couple bites of food sometimes, and then it can lead to nausea, vomiting, bloating, pain, and other sorts of problems. And there’s not a cure that’s known, but it can often be managed through dietary changes and lifestyle changes.

Dana Taylor:

Another major complaint is intestinal obstructions. How severe are some of the worst cases? What have patients alleged here?

Austin Fast:

Yeah, so aside from the stomach paralysis, I mean, there’s some really just gruesome symptoms that the plaintiffs in all these lawsuits are describing. Many of them result in visits to the emergency room or multiple day hospitalizations and sometimes several hospitalizations at different times through the period that they’re taking the drugs. Some people say the symptoms continue even after they stop taking whatever the drug is. So it has a lasting effect even beyond when they’re on it.

One example that really caught my attention as I started to look through these lawsuits was a gentleman in Kentucky who had to go to the hospital, he said a dozen times with cases of fecal vomiting, which is when your intestines are so blocked that literally it goes the only way that it can go, which is up and out. So just really gruesome, terrible stuff.

Dana Taylor:

And you wrote about a smaller number of lawsuits leaked to even more serious conditions. Tell me about some of those.

Austin Fast:

Yeah, there’s dozens of state cases in New Jersey, as well as a few dozen federal cases that claim that plaintiffs had what’s known as an eye stroke, which causes sudden blindness. It’s typically caused when blood flow is blocked to the optic nerve. There were several cases where patients or plaintiffs alleged that these drugs caused gallbladder issues. They had to have their gallbladder removed because they had gangrene there or other issues with their gallbladder.

We spoke with the plaintiff in one of the earliest cases that was filed way back in 2023, and she developed a severe neurological condition from malnutrition. Basically, she had a deficiency of a particular vitamin and it caused this neurological condition which creates mental confusion. She has an unsteady gait. She can’t walk like she used to and vision changes. And she’s really not the same as she was before she started taking these drugs.

Dana Taylor:

As you said, some of these patients shared their stories with USA TODAY. Before we get into more of those, how have Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, the drug makers who manufactured these drugs responded on the issue of the safety of GLP-1s?

Austin Fast:

Well, generally they’ve denied all the claims. They’re saying that they stand behind their drug safety and that they’ll vigorously defend the reputation of their drugs. They add that they’re willing to make updates to the warning labels when the science proves it, and they have made several changes over the past couple years, but in general, they’re denying most of these claims in the thousands of these lawsuits.

Dana Taylor:

I want to turn now to some of the plaintiffs, starting with 63-year-old Todd Engel of Maryland. Why was he taking Ozempic and what severe injury did he allege happen due to his use of a GLP-1 drug?

Austin Fast:

Mr. Engel has diabetes, and so he was taking Ozempic really according to the original use of GLP-1 drugs, which is to help control blood sugar levels in diabetics. His doctor prescribed him a weekly injection of Ozempic back in August of 2023. And just a few months later in December of that year, he woke up and he had severely blurred vision in one eye. At the time, his doctor really didn’t connect it with his Ozempic use. And so he kept taking Ozempic even after he was legally blind in one eye. And 10 months later in October of 2024, he woke up and turned to his wife next to him in bed and said, “You’re not going to believe this. I can’t see out of my other eye.”

So now he’s legally blind. And in his lawsuit, they’re alleging that it’s because of the use of Ozempic. Before he took Ozempic, he was a snowplow driver and moved equipment around the county in Maryland where he lives, but now he can no longer work because of his legal blindness.

Dana Taylor:

And how has the manufacturer, Novo Nordisk responded to the case?

Austin Fast:

So we did ask them specifically about Mr. Engel’s case, and they did not comment directly on that lawsuit when we asked. But in court documents that they filed in some of these cases, the drug companies, so both Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, which is the other manufacturer, they note that diabetic patients like Mr. Engel are already at a higher risk of conditions like blindness and stomach paralysis and intestinal problems when they’re taking the drugs. And last summer, actually, Novo Nordisk’s products, Ozempic and Wegovy, they both added notes to the European labels, so not the American labels, but the labels that are used on the drug in Europe that say that it could increase the risk of eye stroke like this particular plaintiff alleges that he suffered.

Dana Taylor:

Johelen McClain, a 72-year-old real estate agent from Oklahoma City began taking Wegovy in 2023. What did she share with USA TODAY?

Austin Fast:

Right. So Ms. McClain said, like so many other people who are taking these drugs today, they just want to lose a few pounds. She wanted to slim down and it worked at first. So she was taking Wegovy and over about four months, she lost 40 pounds with almost no stomach issues, which a doctor that I spoke with told me is actually pretty rare. He said, that doctor said almost everyone who takes a GLP-1 has some sort of gastrointestinal side effect like nausea or upset stomach, maybe some vomiting.

So it was unusual that she really had no problems at all. And one day, four months into taking that drug, she was driving her granddaughter home from softball practice and they just heard this loud noise, like a balloon popping is what she described. And it was not a balloon. It was her colon rupturing. Luckily, they were just a couple blocks from a hospital. They went straight to the emergency room where the doctors discovered that her intestines had been blocked and she was just stunned that there had been no red flags. There was no constipation, pain, upset stomach. It just ruptured without warning really.

And so the doctors there, they had to remove part of her colon and they created what’s called a stoma, which is a valve in her torso where she has to now attach a bag that collects the stool since her colon has been removed. And so since then, she’s suffered leaks from the stoma, which understandably has caused her anxiety and depression as she adjusts to this new reality that she’s living. And so because of that, she sued claiming the manufacturer downplayed the risks of the drugs.

Dana Taylor:

And I know that you asked Novo Nordisk for a comment on her case. How did they respond?

Austin Fast:

Well, again, like Mr. Engel’s case in Maryland, Novo Nordisk did not address her individual case, but they’ve generally refuted these types of allegations. The FDA label for Wegovy currently warns that it may cause serious side effects, including conditions like thyroid tumors, pancreatitis, gallbladder problems, depression, and as in this case, severe stomach problems. So that’s kind of the closest thing to warning about something as serious as a ruptured colon.

Dana Taylor:

Austin, how widespread is the use of GLP-1s and how many plaintiffs have allegedly suffered severe outcomes from using these drugs?

Austin Fast:

The use of these has really skyrocketed in the past year, a couple of years really. And I’m sure that most of your listeners have someone in their circle or their family or friends or colleagues who is currently using a GLP-1. The latest polling that we could find, which comes from a nonpartisan health organization called KFF, they estimated that 12% of American adults right now are using a GLP-1 drug. And so if we do the math, that’s over 31 million American adults who are taking these drugs right now. And that same poll said that about one in five American adults have tried a GLP-1 drug at any point, so that’s over 46 million Americans.

In terms of the lawsuits over severe side effects of these drugs, I looked at federal court records and then state court records in New Jersey, Indiana, and Delaware, because those are the states where these cases are being consolidated, and found over 4,300 individual lawsuits where the plaintiffs are alleging severe side effects from taking these drugs.

Dana Taylor:

You and your colleagues reviewed a random sample of 100 of the thousands of federal lawsuits filed. What else can you share with us about these plaintiffs?

Austin Fast:

So the majority from that sample, the majority are women, about two-thirds of the plaintiffs in the sample of a hundred cases that we looked at. They skew a little bit older than the average American population. The median age is about 52, but there is a broad range we saw, from mid 20s to mid 70s. There was a big chunk of the plaintiffs who didn’t just use one of these drugs. They tried one and then maybe we switched to another or were using a couple at the same time.

But the majority of them were using Ozempic. That’s about three-fourths of the cases in our sample. About a quarter of them were using Trulicity, and then there was a smaller portion, about 17% that used Mounjaro. And then there’s a bunch of other drugs that were mentioned in just a handful of the cases. And so most of the lawsuits are filed against Novo Nordisk, which is a Danish company that makes Ozempic, Wegovy, and several other GLP-1 drugs.

Dana Taylor:

Austin, there’s no denying what’s alleged in some of these cases is alarming. There are stories that you’ve told that I’ll never forget, but what did experts you spoke with point to you as the positive outcomes linked to GLP-1 use? I know many go beyond weight loss.

Austin Fast:

Right. And we reviewed quite a few studies and spoke with researchers and doctors. And one doctor from the Veterans Affairs Hospital in St. Louis, he told me that his research shows that these drugs are connected with quite a few health benefits. He described how they can reduce the risk of substance use disorder, alcohol use or drugs. He said it reduces suicidal ideation. It can reduce the risk of seizures, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and there was a whole list. And that’s all in addition to what we all know now about how it can help people lose weight and control their blood sugar.

And so that doctor in particular, he really sympathized with these thousands of patients, particularly ones who have had just terrible changes to their life, such as going blind or all these other changes that we’ve described. But overall, he still thinks the benefits outweigh the risks for most patients. And he warns his patients to really listen to their body and talk with their doctor if they have any concerns as they’re taking these drugs.

Dana Taylor:

What hurdles are the plaintiffs facing here? And when will we get a sense of how these GLP-1 cases might go?

Austin Fast:

So one of the hurdles in the federal cases is where plaintiff has said that they suffered from stomach paralysis. The judge in the court where all these cases have been consolidated, that judge is requiring the plaintiffs to have had a particular type of medical test done at the time of their diagnosis to confirm that yes, in fact, they did have stomach paralysis. So anyone who didn’t get that test back when they were first dealing with these issues, they could actually be winnowed out of these cases and be able to participate in whatever compensation or outcome the other plaintiffs get.

The other thing is that these cases typically take a pretty long time. They’re kind of slow moving. Typically, since they’ve all been pooled into this one court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, they’ll have a few, what they call bellwether trials. So basically some test trials to see how the cases go. And the plaintiff’s attorney told us that that’s probably not going to happen until next year, so 2027. And if you think about the first of these lawsuits that were filed back in 2023, it’s a pretty long process of people waiting for some sort of compensation for what they say are serious side effects from taking these drugs.

But some of the people that we spoke with and their families, they’re really hoping that these lawsuits will send a message to the drug companies that will encourage them to really add even stronger and more specific warnings on their drug labels, things such as eye stroke or neurological problems. And they say they never would’ve taken these drugs if they’d known that these types of things would happen.

Dana Taylor:

Austin Fast is an investigative data reporter for USA TODAY. Thank you so much for coming back on The Excerpt, Austin.

Austin Fast:

Yes, thank you for having me.

Dana Taylor:

Thanks to our senior producer, Kaely Monahan, for her production assistance, our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts@usatoday.com. Thanks for listening. I’m Dana Taylor. I’ll be back tomorrow morning with another episode of USA TODAY’s The Excerpt.