Ozempic, Semiglutide Drugs, a Prescription for Blindness?
#133 2024 The Rowen Report
Dear Subscriber,
First, again, Terri and I wish you a joyous Holiday Season, to leave you with many wonderful memories when passed. Most of all, may it be HEALTHY. With that in mind, I bring you my last report before Christmas, and take a few more hours for me and wife in the waning days of 2024. Thank you for being a part of our growing family. I will have an announcement within a few days about our upcoming workshop with ozonated glycerin guru Dr. Jim Bridge. We will be offering limited seats to the public for physical attendance and we also plan to stream it. Registration forms will be required with a fee payment, $350 for in person, and $285 for virtual. There will be NO SALES of product. Only education. The author of the swipe on OG and personal hit on me is welcome to attend and raise challenges and questions Dr. Bridge under the same terms as anyone else who attends.
Terri and I subscribe and donate to one of the worthiest non-profits in the country – Children’s Health Defense, which organization, RFK, Jr was head of until he took a leave to run for president. Their newsletter is outstanding. What they stand for is outstanding.
I have, for decades, warned that the use of any drug will come with potential hazards. If you use a chemical to unnaturally suppress or stimulate something, your system will be bent out of its normal fine-tuned homeostasis, and the resulting unwanted effect can appear elsewhere. A good example of this was the unbridled use of growth hormone as an anti-aging approach some years back. I did not get into this craze as did very many of my colleagues. That is because of the aforementioned philosophy/wisdom. And sure enough, even the Mayo Clinic warns of HGH toxicity:
What are the risks of HGH treatment?
HGH treatment can cause side effects for healthy adults, including:
· A hand condition called carpal tunnel syndrome.
· High blood sugar.
· Type 2 diabetes.
· Swelling in the arms and legs called edema.
· Joint and muscle pain.
· Enlarged breasts in men, also called gynecomastia.
· Higher risk of certain cancers.
·
Remember Vioxx? I never touched (prescribed) it. And for good reason. Affect a metabolic pathway and get in trouble by throwing it out of balance. Vioxx inhibited a key enzyme which, in so doing, did inhibit or reduce inflammation, but which enzyme was also critical for production of prostacyclin, your body’s most important vascular lubricator. I knew its use was a ticking time bomb. Merck hid the vascular toxicity of this for years, killing tens of thousands, just in America. To me, it was intentional murder for profit. I believe I was the first to publicly warn about it long before the deaths were connected to it.
Right now, the. universal craze is the use of semiglutide, the blockbuster drug making galactic money, now used for obesity and weight control. This drug is selling faster than McDonald burgers. This drug also forcibly alters metabolic pathways, in fact, leading to weight loss (but which weight RETURNS when off the drug). But the forced alteration of those pathways will have to have unwanted effects on your overall homeostasis. In this report from Children’s Health Defense, we see Ozempic linked to an alteration in eye nerve metabolism, linking its use to blindness.
Ozempic represents a new class of drugs which will take years to figure out the full measure of untoward effects, much like the genetic jab. We are still figuring out all the complications of that colossal worldwide mistake. According the reports, the odds are not high, but vision is so precious, I, for one, would not play any form of Russian roulette with my eyes (I have macular degeneration), including the use of sexual performance enhancers, which are known to unfavorably alter retinal metabolism. Ozempic does not fix the problem it is treating. It is the easy way out, and is temporary, with the user risking many unknowns including a lighter wallet. These drugs are not ones we would consider, when the problem, difficult as it is, can be directly addressed at the cause.
To Your Excellent Health!
Robert Jay Rowen, MD
The following is reprinted unaltered with permission from Children’s Health Defense. Terri and I are proud donors to this organization, which served as a springboard for RFK, Jr.
December 16, 2024 › Health Conditions › Toxic Exposures › News
TOXIC EXPOSURES
Study Links Ozempic to Blindness, Adding to Growing List of Side Effects
Diabetes patients who took Ozempic were more than twice as likely to develop an eye condition that causes vision loss than patients using a different diabetes drug, according to a new study. Novo Nordisk, which manufactures Ozempic, says the findings don’t change the risk-benefit profile for Ozempic and similar drugs.
DECEMBER 16, 2024
Diabetes patients who took Ozempic were more than twice as likely to develop an eye condition that causes vision loss than patients using a different diabetes drug, according to a new study.
The study linked semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy — which in addition to treating diabetes are widely used to lose weight — to non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION).
The study, published last week on a preprint server, is undergoing peer review.
NAION can result in sudden vision loss due to loss of blood flow to the optic nerve. It is a major cause of severe vision loss and blindness in adults and the second-most common form of optic nerve damage after glaucoma. There is no effective treatment for the condition.
Doctors have recommended that patients considering taking these drugs should be informed of the risk, Bloomberg reported.
While the absolute risk of the disorder remains low, the authors of the study said, they found 1.4 additional cases per 10,000 among patients who took Ozempic.
Researchers analyzed data from the national healthcare registries in Denmark and Norway, comparing the rates of NAION between people taking semaglutide (Ozempic) versus those taking SGLT-2s, an older class of drugs used to treat Type 2 diabetes.
The analysis began in 2018 when drugmaker Novo Nordisk released Ozempic in those markets, and continued through 2022 in Norway and 2024 in Denmark.
The researchers analyzed the records of more than 44,000 Ozempic users in Denmark and more than 16,000 in Norway and found 32 NAION cases. Their findings were generally consistent across their analyses in both countries.
The effect on people taking semaglutide for weight loss was inconclusive, the authors said. That’s because the study required one year of follow-up and given the recent approval of semaglutide for weight loss, there were not yet enough patients in the database to conduct a proper analysis.
However, they did identify eight NAION events among Danish users of semaglutide for obesity.
The study builds on research published in JAMA Ophthalmology earlier this year when Harvard researchers identified a safety signal for NAION in people taking semaglutide for diabetes and weight loss.
That study, inspired by anecdotal evidence that people on the drugs were developing NAION, investigated the effects of semaglutide in people taking the drugs for diabetes and weight loss in the Boston area.
The Harvard researchers found a stronger association than the Nordic study, reporting that people with diabetes were more than four times more likely to be diagnosed with NAION if they were taking semaglutide.
Those who were overweight or obese were more than seven times more likely to experience the condition if they were taking the drug. The Harvard researchers called for more research into the issue to assess causality.
Findings add to growing list of side effects
The findings from the two studies add vision loss to the growing list of serious side effects linked to semaglutide and other GLP-1 drugs — the broader class of drugs they are part of — originally licensed for obesity and now increasingly marketed for weight loss.
Other known side effects range from vomiting, diarrhea and nausea, to pancreatitis, stomach paralysis, kidney disease and thyroid cancer.
The drugs pose such serious risks to pregnant women that doctors have argued they should carry ablack box warning. The drugs also have been linked to suicidal ideation and even to death.
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Authors, Novo Nordisk urge caution interpreting results
The authors of the Nordic study cautioned that although the use of the drugs for diabetes presented a two-fold or higher risk of NAION in their study, “Given the well-established effects of semaglutide in managing both diabetes and obesity, it is crucial to weigh the potential risk of NAION against the substantial therapeutic benefits of semaglutide.”
After the preprint was posted, shares of Novo Nordisk, the company that makes both Ozempic and Wegovy, tumbled 5.4% in Copenhagen, Bloomberg reported.
Novo told The Defender that patient safety is a top priority and the company takes all reports of adverse events from the use of their medications very seriously, but that NAION is not an adverse drug reaction for their drugs containing semaglutide (Ozempic, Rybelsus and Wegovy) according to the approved labels.
“After a thorough evaluation of the studies and Novo Nordisk’s internal safety assessment, Novo Nordisk is of the opinion that the benefit-risk profile of semaglutide remains unchanged,” the company spokesperson said. She added there were very few cases of NAION in Novo’s own clinical trials, “with no imbalance disfavoring” its drugs.
The corresponding author of the study did not respond to The Defender’s request for comment.
Brenda Baletti, Ph.D., is a senior reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master's from the University of Texas at Austin.