With weight-loss prescriptions causing shortage of diabetes drug Ozempic, diabetics struggle to find drug they depend on

Rhonda Fleming endured nearly three weeks without her diabetes medication.

Fleming, 54, of Elk Grove Village, had been trying to track down Ozempic since late December.

She needs the weekly injection to help manage her Type 2 diabetes and had missed two shots when her insurance company finally overnighted her three months of Ozempic through a mail-in pharmacy. Without it, even having an apple for a midmorning snack sent her blood sugar soaring.

“Everything that I see that I want to eat for breakfast, lunch or dinner, I have to make a conscious decision,” Fleming said before the delivery arrived. “What’s this going to do to me because I don’t have my medication? It’s extremely frustrating.”

The federal Food and Drug Administration approved the use of the drug sold under the brand name Ozempic — semaglutide — for Type 2 diabetes in 2017. Novo Nordisk, the drug-maker, developed a weight-loss product that contains a higher dose of semaglutide, but it was marketed under the name Wegovy. After demand for Wegovy surged, doctors began writing more prescriptions for Ozempic off-label for weight loss.

“I would say I get a message about an Ozempic shortage almost every day, and usually it’s more than one,” said Dr. Susan Hudec ofEdward-Elmhurst Medical Group, who specializes in endocrinology, diabetes and metabolism.

The shortages are having a “ripple effect” on supplies of other diabetes medications, she said.

“We’ve had to change doses for patients depending on which dose we can track down,” Hudec said. “We’ll call pharmacies, and they’ll say, ‘Well, we have this one dose in,’ and then we’ll just change the patient to that dose for a short period of time to at least keep them on the medicine and hope for the best. So it’s really been trying to cobble together a plan for patients.”

Hudec said she has patients who call multiple pharmacies searching for their medication. Staffers at her clinic speak with some smaller pharmacies every morning to see what they have in stock.

One alternative is also an injection, but it has to be administered daily instead of once a week, and it’s not quite as effective, Hudec said.

“In general, we don’t like to sample medications from the pharmaceutical company, but we do have this emergency approval to sample Ozempic right now because of the shortage,” Hudec said. “So, if we really can’t find the medicine, then we will sample some doses to patients to keep them out of trouble.”

Over time, uncontrolled diabetes can cause a litany of complications.

“Their kidneys would be kind of the biggest concern of short-term high blood sugar problems,” Hudec said. “But long term it can really affect their heart and their eyes and their vascular flow.”

TikTok videos about Ozempic as a weight-loss aid have gotten millions of views. A Variety headline dubbed it Hollywood’s “new weight-loss drug.”

“It makes me angry, quite honestly, because I wish I didn’t need to take it,” Fleming said of the publicity. “I wish diabetes wasn’t a part of my life where I needed to give myself an injection every single week. But I have no choice. ... I at least should be able to get my medication before somebody who needs it to lose weight when there’s other alternatives for them for weight loss.”

A Novo Nordisk spokeswoman said one- and two-milligram doses are now available across the United States for people with Type 2 diabetes.

“However, we are currently experiencing intermittent supply disruptions on the Ozempic pen that delivers 0.25 mg and 0.5 mg doses due to the combination of incredible demand coupled with overall global supply constraints,” the spokeswoman said.

She said the company expects the supply disruptions of pens at those doses to continue through January.

Hudec said more doses have been available this month than in December. Doctors have been asked to hold off on prescriptions for weight loss.

“At this point, because the diabetic should get priority, we’ve kind of asked just to put a halt on it until the supply chain problems have been improved,” Huden said.

Semaglutide slows digestion, which leaves people feeling fuller longer, Hudec said. In diabetics, it helps the pancreas make insulin “only when you need it,” she said.

Fleming began taking Ozempic after an allergic reaction to another medication. When she was unable to fill her prescription, Fleming said she experienced blood sugar highs and lows.

“My blood sugar went up to 260 from an apple, and then I thought, ‘OK, I need to get my blood sugar down quickly,’ “ she said. “So I went for a two-mile walk, and it dropped all the way down to 92.”

When she saw a UPS delivery with her medication, Fleming said she felt “so relieved. It’s made a huge difference in controlling my diabetes.”