Thick or pregnant? Slimming drugs with unexpected side effects.
We need a health system that doesn't just consider one and one treatment.
AI-generated illustration from Midjourney.
Main moments
Ozempic babies. The new term has emerged after women on semaglutide-based slimming medications experience surprising, positive pregnancy tests.
Researchers have now found that it is due to the fact that slimming drugs can make the birth control pills stop working. The result may be an unwanted pregnancy in the midst of a slimming course.
Weight-reduction drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy have exploded in use globally. In the space of two years, they have gone from being specialist tools for diabetics to becoming a shelf item for weight control and lifestyle change. In Norway, too, demand is high and growing. And for good reason: The slimming drugs are the best thing that's happened to public health in a very long time.
At the same time, the side effects are poorly mapped and the interaction with other drugs is largely based on hypothetical reviews. One study has already documented a 20 percent reduction in the contraceptive pill's active substance in the blood when using GLP-1 drugs.
The efficacy for other oral medications is uncertain, but potentially serious. It is not just about unwanted pregnancies, but about the reduced effectiveness of epilepsy drugs, antibiotics or antidepressants - with far more serious consequences.
Regulatory regime
It's tempting to think that this is the price we pay for a highly effective slimming agent. The drug manufacturers suggest other forms of birth control for a period of time to insure against negative side effects. But we can do better.
When a new type of drug affects the uptake of older, life-critical drugs, it should trigger demands for new research, guidelines and notification to all who come into contact with patients. That's not happening today.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and medicine have a lot in common: They promise efficiency, precision and improved control. But they act in living systems -- and therefore can create unintended but very real consequences.
We need a health system that not only considers one and one treatment, but that understands that people live with multiple diagnoses, multiple medications, and multiple digital solutions at once -- and that interaction is the real area of risk.
We need a regulatory regime that continuously monitors, investigates and informs about interactions and other side effects, without preventing access to a needed drug. A perfect task for just KI.
