What problems are common?
Stomach and bowel problems were common in the trials for semaglutide (Wegovy): feeling sick, throwing up, hard-to-pass stools and loose stools.
Nausea means feeling as if you might vomit.
How often these problems happen can differ with the product and its strength, meaning the amount of medicine in each dose.
What calls for prompt attention?
The Wegovy label warns about bad belly pain that lasts, or pain that reaches the back.
It can be a sign of an inflamed pancreas, an organ in the belly, and needs prompt care.
The label also reports harm to the kidneys when throwing up or having loose stools caused too much fluid loss.
What does the warning about tumors say?
A small organ called the thyroid sits in your neck. Semaglutide’s label has a boxed warning, a prominent notice, about thyroid tumors seen in mice and rats.
It is not known if people face the same tumor effect.
A rare form of thyroid cancer is called medullary thyroid cancer; a past case in you or your family rules semaglutide out.
Semaglutide is also ruled out by the label for anyone with MEN 2, a rare inherited illness. The illness’s full name, multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2, refers to tumors in glands; these body parts make hormones, or chemical messengers. If either name is unfamiliar, take your diagnosis records and any family details to the person providing your care and ask them to check.
The labels also rule out semaglutide after a serious allergic reaction to the drug or any of its other ingredients.