Death linked to Mounjaro

[suki1964]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz6jg6nw2zeo

I am in no way knocking anyone who is using these drugs, seriously if I could use them I would. However Im throwing this up here because these drugs have only been tested and deemed safe on a small study - those who's BMI is above 30.

I am absolutely shocked you don’t see issue with those stories @Searchingforthelight

it highlights the lack of regulation and control on these medicines. It’s off the scale. they are being given out easily online and someone nearly died as a result of unclear advice from a professional around WLI and insulin

of course I’d be worried if it was another drug. We have all watched the recent tv shows on painkillers and the devastating affect that scandal had on millions of people.

Just nonsense
Your lack of understanding of obesity is astounding
Your linking to AN is laughable
Really laughable

Most users of WLI meet criteria
Can't comment on those who commit fraud and they are not my concern
You'll find users of WLI are highly knowledgeable

Laughing at your patronising 'frightened and unsure'

No one needs your infantilising nonsense. We are very well educated on the topic- far, far more so than you are

@Searchingforthelight oh silly me. I didn’t realise obtaining a medical degree to become highly knowledgable was a criteria of obtaining WLI . Do boots ask you to upload your PhD certificate alongside your discount code?

I happily prescribe medication to patients who need it
Those who commit fraud are a different matter
Their fraudulent actions do not take precedence over genuine patients' access to appropriate treatment

And that's identical to the case with WLI

While I see an issue with all fraud, my job is to get on with treating patients. Not investigating fraud.

@Froggerz you still haven’t divulged your “medical degree” perhaps you should upload it together with your comments?

I’m not really sure how the story suggests a lack of regulation? We don’t even know how mounjaro contributed to her death.

@Froggerz can I ask if you're pro-life or pro-choice?

Odd comparison for sure, but abortion comes with risks and depending on your personal viewpoint of when you think life starts, for those who believe at conception, is sure to always end up in at least one death, but can have complications that kill the woman having it.

Do you think these women shouldn't have access to a medical procedure or medication that changes their lives? I mean people across the world lie to have access to abortion all the time. Especially if they're desperate and it's their last resort. A bit like those trying to lose weight.

Do you think these women should just have had the willpower to not get pregnant in the first place? Sure, there are circumstances where they might not have chosen to have had the sex they did that ended up in them being pregnant but it's not black and white is it. There are other viable options, like contraceptives. Even though they can also sometimes fail and come with side effects that can be deadly. A bit like rapid weightloss and OTC weightloss supplementation and the misuse of vitamins really, but they are still viable options even though they don't always work out, are heavily marketed and by your own admission the dietary service has been poorly informed consistently for decades and have been pushed on people from a place of poor public domain knowledge.

What about if staying pregnant or each pregnancy resulted in a higher risk for these women of other things like heart disease, hypertension, clots, strokes, and despite everything they had tried in order to not get pregnant in the first place, for whatever reason be that a lack of willpower or moral compass or laziness and just not trying hard enough, they've still ended up pregnant and in this dangerous situation. You know, a lot like obesity, where people try many different things in order to prevent it or reduce it or cure it and it just doesn't stick, but the risks are still extremely high.

If you are pro-choice for pregnancy and abortion, can you not apply that logic to obesity and realise that people have the right to make a choice about how they manage their disease, and it is a disease that you could argue is borne through lifestyle, choices, environmental factors, because it does change how your body functions and ultimately breaks down or alters the way you metabolise things, permanently and that risk is increased the longer you are obese, which then increases your risk of further complications?

I don't see anyone telling type 2 diabetics that diabetes isn't a disease, its a choice to be diabetic, because they chose to put things in their face that ultimately ended up in poor insulin regulation. Can you not see that there are a lot of factors involved in life that aren't actually within somebody's control that might influence them becoming obese in the first place, and then really struggling to lose that weight and maintain it because there are still factors outside of someone's reasonable control, such as how obesity as a disease works?

But back to my pro-life, pro-choice question, even though there are published research articles that do show that we know this medication has benefits on organ function, immune responses, insulin regulation, has been shown to reverse addiction (to food, and again by your own anecdote, alcohol and money), and has already helped so many people lose weight and their risk of further developing hypertension, heart disease, clots, strokes, dementia, which obviously has a wider impact on the national health service that is provided, why have you got such an opinion about the informed choices that other people make? Are you often controlling in other areas of your life and do you display a lack of empathy, knowledge and faux-concern for people undergoing other medical procedures or taking other medications to resolve physiological issues with their body in the same way as obesity? If not, why is this your hill to die on?

Should a woman be denied an abortion because she might regain a pregnancy in future? She has the right to make a choice about becoming pregnant again in the future surely, and it still might not even be a choice for her, and all the risks of pregnancy would still come back. A bit like if someone lost weight, and then regained it. Would it not be wise to consider quality of life for these hypothetical people?

Would it not be understandable to take the stance of: this isn't the right procedure/medication for me, however that doesn't mean that it isn't the right procedure for everybody else?

You might think apples to oranges pregnancy is pregnancy and is short lived, and I can absolutely acknowledge the differences between pregnancy and obesity such as pregnancy being a condition and not a disease but I've drawn a lot of parallels here and I'm really hoping that you can see that this isn't about defending a medication or claiming it to be the one true fix to all of life's problems, but this medication is the right choice for a lot of people and simply stating that people just need to make better choices is incorrect. People do need to make better choices and changes, but this medication helps in ways beyond simply making better choices. It works on a biological level, and also provides the space for personal rehabilitation. There's also evidence to state that if weightloss on this medication is maintained, after a prolonged duration it has positive permanent changes to the way the metabolism functions which makes maintaining weightloss or minimising weight regain much more likely than someone taking only a short term course, although someone who is only on this medication short term may have less of a metabolic issue as they likely don't have as much to lose as someone who is on this medication long term.

Taking this medication isn't going to reduce your cortisol levels from that stressful job you're working overtime at to make ends meet which in turn disrupts your ghrelin and leptin production, and it's not suddenly going to make your nocturnal child sleep so you can sleep more, which also disrupts your ghrelin and leptin production, and it's not going to stop your lazy husbands doing the bare minimum and spending every Saturday and Sunday and 3 evenings a week golfing or biking or whatever because he needs to de-stress from his Big Man Job or whatever and you've got 3 kids with different dietary needs and you just can't bare the thought of cooking 3 or possibly more different meals so you just grab whatever from the fridge and eat it cold and then all the cleaning up and then when your husband gets back you can't face the idea of an hour on the treadmill knowing tiny Tim is going to be up at 1 3 5 and 7am. It's not going to change any of that. Environmental factors will always play a huge part in someone's success with weightloss, but surely you can also see that in each of these scenarios that I've just mentioned its also not a matter of willpower. It's hormone disruption and if you've got the cheat code for overcoming hormone disruption or dysregulation without taking a medication I think you would have solved a lot of problems.

You mean the girl that is clearly pro ana? The one that also talks about her laxatives kicking?

Pro ana on social media and over the counter medicine abuse has been going on forever. That girl is ill. She isn’t who the medicine is intended for. You do realise there’s no evidence that she got this legitimately or that it’s even the proper product.

So it’s entirely irrelevant to people taking it properly. But why does MJ bother you? The problem is the pro ana posts being allowed on social media. Does laxative use bother you so much that someone posting about laxatives for their proper use, bother you? Does it make you afraid for your daughters? That people usually take laxatives correctly? Despite laxatives being massively abused by people with eating disorders?

Yes some of the side effects can be hideous. That’s never been hidden or denied. So what’s your point? Doesn’t that prove that the vast majority of people taking it are doing so because they genuinely tried everything else and it didn’t work?

@SunQueen24 I never said I had one! Although I do have a related science degree and work in a related scientific field. I'm not completely thick.

But others saying I can't possibly be even a bit right because all weight loss drug users are "highly knowledgable" is ridiculous and I don't have a medical degree so I must be talking bollocks!

Nobody is saying you can’t be right because other people are more knowledgeable, people are saying you’re not necessarily right with all your ill informed comments and offering a counter argument, often with more evidence and based in fact rather than opinion. Unlike your own views.

They are being judgmental.

saying things like ‘you could just do xyz’ is a judgement. And unfounded judgement.

The clear ‘you don’t medication’ is a judgement and it’s nothing something anyone would say to a person with anorexia or depression or an alcoholic. It’s also a judgement.

No the concern isn’t compassion. Judgement positioned as concern is not compassion.

And you can see it because it doesn’t make sense. Believing Mounjaro is more of a risk to teenage girls that fat burners, crash diets, laxative use, celebs with BBLs and Fillers etc isn’t based on anything. All of sudden having concern about social media and diet culture because MJ became available doesn’t make sense. A teenager is far more likely to be able to get unregulated fat burners and laxatives and hide their use that they will a £150 prescription medication. If your concern only appears when over weight people have found something that genuinely helps them, you aren’t concerned about the impact on teenagers.

How worried are you about people abusing laxatives? Or people who believe and encourage other women to ‘cure’ their eating disorder by replacing it with orthorexia?

@Jimmyneutronsforehead what a brilliant post. Thank you.

I can't get involved with any argument about abortion because it's ultimately about another person... the baby. So I would not ban abortions no because it result in a lot of unsuitable people becoming parents to very unhappy children. Taking WLI is quite different.

Some of you are blind to the fact that a person died here. The experts have said it was related. It's opening up a discussion. You all have your fingers in your ears. You all see what you want to see. You all make excuses... maybe she was sick before, maybe she took it wrong. It was only one person etc etc

There is no helping some people sadly. And until more robust evidence comes out maybe people won't see the issues that this drug has started to cause.

https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-comments-on-the-risks-and-benefits-of-tirzepatide-following-following-the-death-of-susan-mcgowan/

Not quite @Froggerz

It was bound to happen and I’m slightly surprised to hear it was the first death.
It should be prescribed via GP only.

People are happy to discuss. What we don’t want to do is have the conversation closed down until we agree with one very narrow POV.

@Froggerz what discussion do you want opened up? It doesn't seem like you want a discussion, you just seem to want to fear monger and call people cultists. What discussion does this one incident merit? It is a very sad case and very sad for the woman's family. What is in the public domain is the death certificate information only, we don't know anything else. We have no idea if this was an extremely rare side effect or if it was something pre-existing worsened by the tirzepatide, or if it was coincidental that she was taking it. That needs much more further investigation, which will likely be happening given it's been reported to the relevant bodies.

Nothing about this case would have been different if she had been prescribed this by the NHS, so it's not about people getting private prescriptions. She acquired it correctly and met the criteria, so it's not about people getting Mounjaro fraudulently. She was a nurse and she took the doses as per the instructions, so it's not about people using the injections incorrectly.

We all know a person has died.

Why are you pretending that more important to you than other people? It’s lot. You are using this woman’s death to judge and berate other women for making a different choice to the one you think you would make.

The Op that posted this is a huge fan of slimming world. A business that keeps running due to its failure rate. A business that has given countless people disordered thinking around food. You know the diet industry people are so worried about. Do you think she is worried about the young women of today? Diet culture? Why do you think they posted it.

Are you concerned about all the slimming work, intermittent fasting etc posts on MN? Contributing to diet culture?

How is a persons death opening a discussion? It’s a discussion for the medical experts to have. Not the general public. A woman dying doesn’t mean it’s all of sudden ok to be judgmental about other people taking a medication.

This thread isn’t going achieve anything that changes the way MJ is prescribed. So what’s the gain? And there’s nowhere enough detail on the report to know if anything else was at play. So the conversation can’t be effective because there’s too many unknowns.

Had this been a death when taking ibuprofen or laxatives it wouldn’t have been reported so you wouldn’t have felt compelled to tell anyone taking laxatives through prescription that clearly just haven’t thought it through and should do something else. Or that their choice of medication is damaging to women.

You wouldn’t even do that if it had been reported.

Interestingly the same article that posted about the woman's death went on to state facts and positive statements about Mounjaro, including statements from the manufacturer Eli Lilly and other medical professionals. They simply wanted to grab attention first with the bad news (as is usual with the media) to get the attention of the gullible who wouldn't read further after they saw what they wanted to see. Fingers in ears and all.

It's a shame that the media uses someone's death in this way though but I suppose they had to show some objectivity in reporting facts from both sides.

How would that have prevented this woman’s death?

According to the article she became sick very quickly. In the days after her second dose.

I agree, it is too easy to obtain imo. There should be certain health checks done before they are prescribed, blood work etc.

I agree it’s too easy to obtain too. I also think prescribers should be more closely following patients and their experience. I also think that’s true of other medications. But it comes at a cost and cost brings limitations.

I'm slightly surprised to hear it was the first death

That says something because you keep expecting it to go wrong for various reasons. Meanwhile, those who're knowledgeable about the medication, including the manufacturers, know/expect this is hopefully a rare occurrence and will continue to do everything they need to make sure it will be. Some things though cannot be completely avoided.

I'm not disillusioned to the risks that this medication poses.

I actually have very close experience of the outcomes of these risks.

I'm not against higher regulation but limiting accessibility is absolutely not the answer, and the benefits individually in an overwhelming majority of cases, and certainly the benefits to society at large deem this to be a medication that should remain on the table for obesity.

We're not unaware of these medications, GLP-1s have been around for a good long while now in the effective treatment of diabetes, and insulin resistence.

You can shake your finger at us and say "you'll see, you'll all see" and we will.

We will see more deaths. It's inevitable. Paracetamol kills, aspirin kills, ibuprofen kills. Any medication can kill. We will also see a marked decline in obesity related illness and deaths the more readily available these medications become.

What we hope to see with the increase in this medication being more readily available is more accessibility in medical supervision and care so preventable cases can be prevented.

If you want to make a change to the environmental factors that prohibit weightloss before people resort to these medications, lobby for better mental and physical health services, better working conditions, hold the people in your life accountable for the support roles they play in their families, lobby for fairer pay for farmers and bring back the local butcher and grocer, but stop telling people that they simply need to make better choices. There is nothing simple about it. YOU might feel YOU can simply make choices and changes to your life that influence your health and weight but that's an extremely privileged place to be at.