A popular drug prescribed for diabetes, brand names Ozempic and Wegovy, that includes weight loss as a side effect is causing massive numbers of overdoses, to the tune of 2,941 just between January 1, 2023, and November 30, 2023.

There were only 364 overdoses in all of 2020. “It is an alarming trend from a poison center perspective,” Raymond Ho, managing director of the California Poison Control System, told the LA Times. “We get the usual dosing error calls, and all of a sudden there’s an explosion of people calling much more regularly about this.”

Emergency physician Dr. Stephen Petrou said multiple factors were contributing to the problem, but the majority of overdoses were accidental.

SOURCE: LA Times December 20, 2023