Tammie Rachell Largent-Phillips, 52, has type 2 diabetes. She has been managing the disease for the past two years with a drug called Ozempic, which helps people with diabetes control their blood sugar levels.
But in November she was forced to modify to a different drug, insulin. The Ozempic she needed was not available at her pharmacy.
Demand for the drug has skyrocketed in recent months, colliding with global supply issues. Together, this led to a shortage of Ozempic.
However the popularity of Ozempic or semaglutide is not as a result of rising rates of diabetes. Doctors say it is as an alternative as a result of weight loss advantages. At a higher dose, semaglutide is used for weight loss. Producer Ozempic Recent Nordisk sells this higher dose under a different brand name: Wegovy.
Shortages of Wegova, also highly regarded, were widespread last 12 months. As a result, some individuals who were taking Wegovy were as an alternative prescribed Ozempic off-label for weight loss. This causes problems for people like Largent-Phillips who need the drug to administer their chronic disease.
“It was very frustrating,” Largent-Phillips, of Florida, said of the deficiency, adding that her blood sugar levels fluctuated because she had to modify medications.
In people with type 2 diabetes, the body doesn’t use insulin properly. Insulin is a hormone that tells cells within the body to soak up glucose or sugar from the blood. If the body doesn’t use it well, sugar stays within the blood, leading to high blood sugar.
Ozempic works by mimicking a hormone within the body that regulates insulin levels. It’s a kind of medicine called a GLP-1 agonist. The drug is self-administered weekly as an injection.
Without medication, people with type 2 diabetes risk blood sugar spikes that may potentially result in serious health problems, including heart disease, kidney disease, hearing loss, and stroke.
“Even within the short term, people can feel bad about high blood glucose levels,” said Dr. Robert Gabbay, chief scientist of the American Diabetes Association.
Ozempic supply shortages meant some patients needed to go to several pharmacies before they may find a cure, said Dr. Marcio Griebeler, an endocrinologist on the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. He said that in other cases, patients were forced to take a lower dose because that was all that was available.
It isn’t “ideal,” Griebeler said, because patients may not respond the identical way they might to a higher dose.
For individuals who cannot find a drug in any respect, the one option is to modify to a different drug that might not be as effective, said Dr. Susan Spratt, an endocrinologist and senior medical director within the office of population health management at Duke Health in North Carolina.
That is what 57-year-old Shane Anthony from Seattle needed to do. He has type 2 diabetes and has been unable to get Ozempic since October.
Anthony was prescribed a different drug but said it wasn’t as effective. His wife, Gerilynn, who is a nurse, said that since he left Ozempic, his blood sugar levels have returned to normal.
“It really pisses me off; it drives me crazy,” said Anthony. “We’d like it to live and performance day-after-day.”
Switching to a different drug also complicates things when Ozempic becomes available again.
Returning to Ozempic is not all the time a easy adjustment, Spratt said; because it may possibly cause unwanted effects such as nausea or vomiting, patients are sometimes prescribed a lower dose first, which is progressively increased over several weeks.
“To get back on medication, you have to begin all another time,” she said, “and that is really tedious.”
Dr. Disha Narang, an endocrinologist at Northwestern Medicine Lake Forest Hospital in Illinois, said she sees patients “day-after-day” who took Ozempic and later discovered that their pharmacy not stocks the drug.
She said some patients had managed to search out samples in doctors’ offices.
But others stopped taking their medications altogether, she said, leading their blood sugar levels to soar.
She added that the shortage was difficult for each patients and doctors.
“We do not necessarily have control of the availability chain,” she said, adding that doctors act as a kind of intermediary between patients and the drugs they need.
Novo Nordisk, the corporate that makes each Ozempic and Wegovy, told NBC News that Ozempic’s availability has improved, but delivery issues remain.
Allison Schneider, a spokeswoman for the corporate, said in a statement that Ozempic is currently available in certain doses for type 2 diabetes, nevertheless, the corporate is still struggling with supplies that can run throughout the month, with patients in some US regions experiencing delays in receiving their medications. .
“Anyone focused on continuing treatment should contact their doctor,” she said.
Largent-Phillips of Florida, who documents her experiences on TikTok, said she must be careful about monitoring her blood sugar for now.
She said she didn’t blame the deficiency on the individuals who use it for weight loss, but on the manufacturer and the availability chain.
She noticed that besides her, there are various individuals who need this medicine to manage with their illnesses.
“It’s awful,” she said.