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Novo Nordisk’s (NVO) blockbuster diabetes drug Ozempic might have a possible hyperlink with a watch situation that causes imaginative and prescient loss, based on a non-peer reviewed study revealed Thursday on medRxiv.
Diabetes sufferers utilizing Ozempic have been discovered to be over twice as more likely to develop a uncommon eye situation referred to as NAION in comparison with these taking different diabetes medicines, based on researchers who analyzed years of affected person information from Denmark and Norway.
Still, the examine decided that the general incidence of the situation was exceptionally low, with simply 1.4 further instances per 10,000 patient-years of commentary — calculated because the variety of sufferers multiplied by the years they have been monitored — amongst these taking Ozempic in comparison with customers of different diabetes medicines.
If the danger stays constant over time, a sort 2 diabetes affected person taking Ozempic for 20 years would face a 0.3% to 0.5% probability of creating NAION, based on the examine.
The findings for Wegovy — the corporate’s weight-loss drug that shares the identical energetic ingredient as Ozempic — have been inconclusive resulting from an inadequate variety of sufferers within the evaluation. Wegovy didn’t launch in Denmark till 2022 and in Norway till 2023.
NAION is a situation through which blood movement within the optic nerve — a bundle of nerve fibers that connects the again of the attention to the mind — is diminished resulting in sudden and irreversible blindness. The situation is the most typical optic nerve illness within the United States, affecting as much as 10 out of 100,000 older Americans every year, based on the American Academy of Ophthalmology.
Novo Nordisk didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark from Quartz.
This examine follows another one from earlier this year that additionally discovered a hyperlink between semaglutide, the energetic ingredient in Ozempic, and NAION.
“Given the well-established results of semaglutide in managing each diabetes and weight problems, it’s essential to weigh the potential threat of NAION towards the substantial therapeutic advantages of semaglutide,” the researchers wrote.
