Ozempic Causes Serious Health Issues, Class Action Claims
Novo Nordisk failed to warn consumers its weight loss drug Ozempic can cause a number of serious health issues, including gastroparesis, a new class action lawsuit alleges.
Plaintiff Diane Dyess filed the Ozempic side effects class action lawsuit Jan. 31 in Pennsylvania federal court, where it joins an existing multidistrict litigation centered on claims that Novo Nordisk’s glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 RAs) cause serious injuries, including gastroparesis.
The lawsuit claims Novo Nordisk failed to provide adequate warnings about the risk of gastroparesis and other adverse events allegedly associated with Ozempic, including gastrointestinal injuries, ischemic bowel, necrotizing pancreatitis, gallbladder disease, deep vein thrombosis, micronutrient deficiencies, Wernicke’s encephalopathy and aspiration of gastric contents.
What a $2 Million per Dose Gene Therapy Reveals About Drug Pricing
Vincent Gaynor remembers, almost to the minute, when he realized his part in birthing the breakthrough gene therapy Zolgensma had ended and the forces that turned it into the world’s most expensive drug had taken over. It was May 2014. He and his wife were sitting in the cafeteria at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.
Elsewhere in the hospital, an infant — patient No. 1 in a landmark clinical trial — was receiving an IV infusion that, if it worked, would fix the genetic mutation that caused spinal muscular atrophy, a rare, incurable disease. At the time, children born with the most severe form of SMA swiftly lost their ability to move, to swallow, to breathe.
Depending on the disease’s progression, most didn’t live to their second birthdays.
The Gaynors’ daughter Sophia had been diagnosed with SMA five years earlier. Since then, they’d raced to fund research to save her. Their charity, Sophia’s Cure, was covering a substantial portion of the costs of the trial.
They’d helped raise about $2 million for a program at Nationwide run by Brian Kaspar, a leading researcher. Gaynor, a New York City construction worker, had forged a tight bond with Kaspar, speaking frequently with him by phone, sometimes deep into the night.
10 New Cases of Measles Reported in West Texas County and New Mexico
Public health authorities said Tuesday that an outbreak of measles in western Texas has expanded, while a new case was confirmed nearby across state lines in New Mexico. The Texas Department of State Health Services has identified 24 measles cases in connection with the onset of symptoms within the last two weeks. Gaines County, a small county in West Texas, has one of the highest rates of vaccine exemptions in the state.
In neighboring Lea County, New Mexico, residents were alerted Tuesday to the measles infection of an unvaccinated teenager, as well as the possible exposure of more people in Lovington at a hospital emergency room and sixth grade school gymnasium.
“The New Mexico youth had no recent travel or exposure to known cases from the Texas outbreak,” the New Mexico Department of Health said in a news release.
Nine of the measles patients in Texas have been hospitalized. All of the confirmed cases in Gaines County involve unvaccinated residents.
The Complicated World of Compounded Weight-Loss Drugs
On Super Bowl Sunday, many tuning into the big game saw a controversial ad from the telehealth company Hims & Hers. The minute-long spot begins by skewering the American health care system, saying it’s “designed to keep us sick and stuck” while profiting off of America’s obesity epidemic. It then launches into promotion of the company’s compounded weight-loss medications.
Prior to the game, a pharmaceutical trade group and government officials complained about the ad’s potential to mislead consumers about the safety and side effect information of the drugs. Still, the ad ran unaltered. The backlash to the ad speaks to the complicated nature of weight loss in America today, according to Northwestern University obesity experts Drs. Justin Ryder and Veronica Johnson.
“Yes, these drugs provide some level of risk, but I think this speaks to the desperation and larger insurance-coverage issues,” said Ryder, associate professor of surgery and pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and vice chair of research for the department of surgery at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital. “These companies are preying on you, but we live in a capitalistic society.”
Cutting Edge Oxford Malaria Vaccine Trial in Jeopardy as USAID Payments Frozen
A groundbreaking malaria vaccine trial in the U.K. has been abruptly paused after it had its U.S.-government funding stopped, The Telegraph understands. Led by the Oxford Vaccine Group at the University of Oxford, the phase I trial — funded by USAID — was testing two innovative vaccines designed to prevent the malaria parasite from entering the bloodstream.
Scientists at Oxford lead the world in malaria vaccine research and last year teamed up with the Serum Institute in India to release a ground-breaking jab now being rolled out across large parts of Africa. The latest trial is for a new malaria vaccine and came to a halt on Jan. 20, after President Donald Trump ordered USAID, the U.S. government’s international aid bureau, to pause payments for 90 days.
The pause has left at least 42 British students and others who volunteered to take the experimental vaccine in limbo. Some doses were administered as recently as within the last month, and unless funding is renewed the trial will not continue, meaning the risks they took will have been in vain. Risks — although rare — include anaphylactic shock and Guillain-Barré syndrome, according to trial documents seen by The Telegraph.
Mpox: Scientists Offer Better Understanding of Tecovirimat Resistance
A virus originally found in animals, mpox — which causes the disease of the same name — is now circulating in humans. Since 2022, it has been the cause of major epidemics spreading outside endemic areas in Central and West Africa. Two hundred and fifteen cases of mpox infection were reported to Santé publique France in 2024.
Tecovirimat is the drug most commonly used to treat patients infected with the mpox virus. Unfortunately, it is sometimes ineffective against certain variants of the virus that have mutations in an enzyme.
Scientists at the Institut Pasteur have been studying this resistance, and have been able to describe more precisely how this enzyme interacts with tecovirimat. This research will make it possible to develop novel antiviral therapeutic approaches. The study was published on Feb.12, 2025 in Nature Microbiology.
