Popular Weight Loss Drugs Increase Risk of Suicidal and Self-Harm Behaviours

The latest on the impending semaglutide/liraglutide train wreck.

In September last year, I wrote about the latest toxic fad to hit the wacky world of weight loss. Diabetic drugs-turned-weight loss elixirs such as Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Saxenda had become all the rage, despite a disturbing array of side effects.

These drugs belong to a class known as glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1RAs). Among the safety red flags raised for GLP-1RAs was an increased risk of suicidal and self-harm behaviours.

Big Pharma and Big Gov Launch Into Damage Control With Some Made-To-Order Science™

When its drugs come under scrutiny for increasing risk of an ailment, Big Pharma will often contrive research that portrays the drugs, not just as safe, but in fact beneficial for the ailment in question.

A recent example of this is the farcical study last year claiming that statins reduced the risk of Alzheimers and dementia, when controlled trials have already shown the exact opposite.

Lo and behold, on January 5 of this year the industry-friendly National Institutes of Death Health published a paper claiming that semaglutide compared with non-GLP1RA anti-obesity medications was associated with lower risk for incident (HR = 0.27) and recurrent (HR = 0.44) suicidal ideation.

Those bracketed hazard ratios indicate the drugs markedly reduced the rate of incident and recurrent risk of suicidal ideation by almost three-quarters and over a half, respectively.

Those figures were derived from a sample of patients with overweight or obesity who were prescribed semaglutide or another medication for weight loss between June 2021 and December 2022.

The researchers also claim to have “replicated” the findings in 1,589,855 patients with type 2 diabetes who were prescribed either semaglutide or other medications between December 2017 and May 2021.

This fanciful claim of a reduced suicidal ideation risk was made after a retrospective analysis using data from an electronic database dubbed the TriNetX Analytics Network. Among the sample populations, people taking semaglutide were compared with people taking non-GLP1RA medications - not to people taking no medications. In other words, people taking toxic pharma junk were compared to people taking other toxic pharma junk.

The chair of TriNetX is Ian C. Read, who just happened to be the CEO of Pfizer up until January 1, 2019, when he was succeeded by Albert “The Criminal” Bourla.

Two other TriNetX board members, Joe Bress and Steve Wise, are managing directors at The Carlyle Group mega-fund, which in 2018 launched its own drug company called Millicent Pharmaceuticals (Bress and Wise are both board members at Millicent).

The rest of the board is stacked with pharma insiders, and TriNetX seems far more concerned with their business acumen than their ability to oversee the rigorous and ethical handling of data. For example, its description of “Board Observer” Joseph B Volpe gushes about the time “He earned industry laurels when he participated in the sale of Humedica, a healthcare analytics company, to UnitedHealth Group in 2013, a transaction that produced a 17-fold return.”

Wow. The only time I get returns like that is when I write a Trump article. For every article about Captain Warp Speed that I post, I get 17 lunatics calling me names, arguing around in circles, creating strawman arguments, and blatantly ignoring the evidence showing him to be a dishonest, perverted, globalist-controlled, vaccine-pimping turd. Just like the Demo rats. Of which he used to be one.

But I digress.

It turns out that TriNetX is far more than just a database manager - it is a contract company that offers trial management and research services to Big Pharma. “TriNetX,” says it website, “is a global network of healthcare organizations and life sciences companies driving real-world research to accelerate the development of new therapies. Through its self-service, HIPAA, GDPR, and LGPD-compliant platform of federated EHR, datasets, and consulting partnerships, TriNetX puts the power of real-world data into the hands of its worldwide community to improve protocol design, streamline trial operations, refine safety signals, and enrich real-world evidence generation.”

So TriNetX is in the business of keeping Big Pharma happy, and part of this business is to “refine” safety signals.

Sorry folks, but I can’t help be highly suspicious of any data emanating from such a company, especially when that data allegedly shows toxic semaglutide drugs drastically lower the risk of suicide.

Less than a week after the NIH study was published in Nature Medicine, the FDA - effectively an industry front group masquerading as a government safety agency - issued a Drug Safety Communication claiming its “preliminary evaluation has not found evidence that use of these medicines causes suicidal thoughts or actions.”

It claimed its review of the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) and clinical trials did not demonstrate a “clear relationship” between suicidality and the use of GLP-1 RAs. “However, because of the small number of suicidal thoughts or actions observed in both people using GLP-1 RAs and in the comparative control groups, we cannot definitively rule out that a small risk may exist; therefore, FDA is continuing to look into this issue.”

This is FDAspeak for “we will continue to downplay this issue on behalf of our pharma paymasters until it becomes untenable. When that happens, we will call for a stronger ‘black box’ warning on the package insert, which will allow this junk to remain on market where, just like deadly antidepressant drugs, it will continue to injure and kill people because most doctors and patients never read the package insert. Doctors trust what the drug companies tell them, and patients trust what their doctors tell them. It’s a beautiful system, ain’t it!?!”

[Insert uproarious laughter by FDA officials who know a lucrative industry job awaits when they leave the agency]

“Of course, if the poo poo really hits the fan, we’ll meet with the drug companies who will agree to ‘voluntarily withdraw’ the drugs from market.”

By the way, the Ozempic package insert already contains a black box warning for the possible development of medullary thyroid cancer and multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2.

Worldwide Data Finds Increased Risk of Suicidality With Semaglutide

A new study, published a few days ago in the journal JAMA Network Open, looked at reports of suicidal thoughts in people taking semaglutide and liraglutide.

The researchers, led by Dr Georgios Schoretsanitis from the Zucker Hillside Hospital, New York, searched for reports of suicidal or self-injurious adverse drug reactions (ADRs) associated with liraglutide and semaglutide within the WHO global individual case safety reports (ICSRs) database. The ICSRs is the largest pharmacovigilance archive worldwide, containing over 36 million reports of suspected ADRs from 140 member countries. The database is monitored by the Uppsala Monitoring Centre (UMC) in Sweden.

Reports for semaglutide were recorded between July 2011 and August 2023, while reports for liraglutide were collected between November 2000 and August 2023.

Cases were all reports of suicidal and/or self-injurious ADRs, whereas controls were all other reports of suspected ADRs.

The researchers also examined the interaction of semaglutide and liraglutide with other drugs, and whether there were any combinations that affected suicidal and self-harm behaviours.

Of the 36,172,078 total reports for suicidal and self-injurious ADRs in the database as of August 30, 2023, the researchers identified a total of 107 cases of suicidal and/or self-injurious ADRs associated with semaglutide (107 of the 30,527 total reports for semaglutide).

Data on duration for semaglutide treatment were available in 26 patients reporting suicidal ideation, with a mean duration of 80.39 (range 0 to 610) days between semaglutide treatment initiation and suicidal ideation occurrence.

The median age of case subjects was 48 (40-56) years, and 55% of cases were female.

The researchers found 162 cases of suicidal and/or self-injurious ADRs associated with liraglutide (162 of 52,131 total reports for liraglutide).

The median age of these cases was 47 (38-60) years, and 61% of cases were female patients.

Compared with all medications, semaglutide returned a reporting odds ratio (ROR) of 1.45 for suicidal ideation.

Despite the number of cases, the researchers did not detect any signals for liraglutide-associated suicidal and/or self-injurious ADRs. However, pooled data from phase 2 and 3 trials on liraglutide versus placebo for weight management identified a potential risk for suicidal ideation. Nine of 3,384 participants in the liraglutide group versus 2 of 1,941 in the placebo group reported suicidal ideation or behavior during the trial (0.3% vs 0.1%).

Nine of the 11 individuals had a history of psychiatric disorders or life stressors accompanying the events. Rather than urge caution in such patients, the Novo Nordisk-funded researchers of this pooled analysis claimed “Overall, no evidence suggests that a positive history of these types of events should be a contraindication for treatment with liraglutide.”

Sure.

Underestimating versus Under-reporting

The numbers of cases retrieved may not sound like huge figures, and some commentators have downplayed the findings. “This paper presents, at best, weak evidence of an association between semaglutide and suicidality,” said Ian Douglas, a professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine who has unrestricted research grants from and shares in GlaxoSmithKline and a research grant from AstraZeneca. Douglas has also co-authored research with Kamlesh Khunti and fellow faculty member Andrew H Briggs, both of whom have received funding from Novo Nordisk, who just happens to be the manufacturer of Ozempic and Wegovy.

Even when ignoring their industry connections, the dismissive stance of folks like Douglas is still inherently flawed, because it ignores a demonstrated shortcoming of AER databases. It is well-known these safety databases capture only a fraction of actual adverse drug events - as little as 1%.

Furthermore, the safety signals are derived by comparing the association of a drug with a specific type of adverse event on the database with that of other drugs on the same database. These analyses do not tell us the increased risk of a specific adverse event conferred by a drug when compared to not using a related drug or no drugs at all.

So when you have a drug that is emitting safety signals not only for suicidal and self-harming behaviour, but certain cancers, and has a solid track record for sending people to the emergency ward with serious gastrointestinal issues, we’re not dealing with a drug where “further monitoring is warranted.” We are dealing with yet another highly problematic class of drug that should have been withdrawn long ago, but remains on market because it is highly profitable for its manufacturers.

“Possible off-label use” and “weight management” were the reasons for use in a majority of cases. Diabetes was the cited indication for use in only 24.3% of semaglutide cases and 20.4% of liraglutide cases.

Following discontinuation and rechallenge, suicidal ideation resolved after drug discontinuation in 62.5% of the cases, for both for semaglutide and liraglutide.

Cases who were using the following drugs alongside semaglutide showed an even higher reporting rate of suicidal ideation, compared with all medications:

• antidepressants (ROR, 4.45)

• benzodiazepines (ROR, 4.07)

• dapagliflozin (ROR, 5.56)

• metformin (ROR, 3.86)

• orlistat (ROR, 4.24)

People with anxiety and depressive disorders may be at higher probability of reporting suicidal ideation when medicated with semaglutide.

When repeating the analysis after excluding cases in which antidepressants were coreported, the researchers did not detect a disproportionality signal.

In contrast, when repeating the analysis after excluding cases in which benzodiazepines were coreported, the disproportionality remained significant.

“This is consistent with an interaction between baseline psychopathology and semaglutide effects and warrants further investigation,” the authors noted. “Although [European Medicines Agency] stated that no update to the product information is warranted, based on these findings, we believe that a precaution of use in patients with psychiatric disorders or psychological lability could be added in the semaglutide package insert. Remarkably, the FDA label of semaglutide for obesity warned to monitor for depression or suicidal thoughts.”

“Considering the risk of suicidal ideation in people taking semaglutide off-label, authorities should consider issuing a warning to inform about this risk.”

Stop Listening to Clueless Wankers

The world has gone beyond just hanging on every word of academics with little real world knowledge or experience. The world now also listens attentively to a new pack of clueless wankers called “influencers,” whose only qualifications seem to be a narcissistic craving for attention and an ability to incessantly gush over whatever stupid fad they are pimping on TikTok and Instagram.

Influencers have played a huge role in popularizing drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Saxenda. Listen to these idiots at your own risk. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - the GLP-1RA fad isn’t going to end well.