Ozempic’s FDA label warns that pancreatitis has been reported in clinical trials, and that anyone experiencing pancreatitis should permanently discontinue using the medication.
But the expert consensus is now that semaglutide and other GLP-1 drugs do not increase the risk of pancreatitis, says Drucker.
Why is the disease listed as a possible side effect? A study published in 2009 on sitagliptin, another GLP-1 drug, found a high percentage of rats on the medication developed pancreatitis.
[12]
“This got a lot of people concerned and interested, but we subsequently learned that many different species of rats exhibit extraordinarily high rates of spontaneous pancreatitis,” says Drucker. In other words, those early rodent cases of pancreatitis were probably a false alarm.
There’s a second issue: GLP-1 drugs can trigger the release of enzymes that are associated with pancreatic disorders.
GLP-1 drugs act directly on the pancreas in a variety of ways, which helps account for how effective they are in treating type 2 diabetes. One of the changes they provoke is extra production of the digestive enzymes amylase and lipase. These are both healthy substances that break down food into energy, but too much of either is considered a sign of pancreatic disorder.
[13]
When patients tell their doctors that they have abdominal pain (a common side effect of GLP-1 drugs), and a blood or urine test shows elevated amylase or lipase levels, “that’s two out of three criteria for pancreatitis,” says Drucker. When a GLP-1 is the apparent cause, however, an imaging scan of the pancreas isn’t needed to confirm a diagnosis, but may be necessary to rule out other causes.
Decades after those early studies in rodents, we now have excellent data on the long-term effects of semaglutide and other GLP-1 drugs in humans. These trials have evaluated the health of tens of thousands of people. And the data now shows that GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic almost certainly do not cause the development of pancreatic disorders.
[14]
[15]
“Now we have much more data and we really don’t see an increase in pancreatitis standing out with the GLP-1 medicines,” says Drucker.
Pancreatitis Symptoms
While it’s unlikely that Ozempic, or other GLP-1 receptor agonists, are causing pancreatitis, it’s a very common condition responsible for over 275,000 hospital admissions per year.
[16]
It’s good to be familiar with pancreatitis symptoms.
On the official Ozempic label, the FDA reports that pancreatitis is characterized by “persistent severe abdominal pain, sometimes radiating to the back and which may or may not be accompanied by vomiting.” Other potential symptoms of pancreatitis include fever, elevated heart rate, and greasy or yellow stool.
Acute pancreatitis usually comes on quickly, and typically lasts only a handful of days. The disease may require an extended stay in the hospital. In a minority of cases it can lead to severe outcomes, including death.
Chronic pancreatitis, in which symptoms do not improve or keep reoccurring, is most commonly caused by alcohol abuse.
