Experts warn of another potential side effect of popular weight-loss drugs: reckless behavior.
According to two experts, the drugs could cause people to act abnormally, engage in risky behaviors, like gambling, or make huge changes in their lives, like getting divorced, the Daily Mail reports.
Collectively, such behavior is called impulse control disorder – an umbrella term that encompasses conditions that make it difficult to control your actions. This could include everything from angry outbursts to more serious disorders like pyromania, according to the Cleveland Clinic.
The researchers wrote a paper published earlier this month in QJM stating that “the effects on cognition (have) received little attention.”
Most studies focus only on the rapid weight loss phase of using these drugs, and very few studies focus on longer-term results, they say.
The co-authors, who include a gastroenterologist and a psychiatrist, then say they have heard of people who started taking the blockbuster GLP-1 drugs and made major life changes, such as divorce or moving. , a few months after the start of their treatment. .
“Without knowing the details underlying these events, the justification for some of them seems imprudent,” the authors conclude.
The researchers said they don’t know why the drugs might cause people to make such decisions, but it wouldn’t be the first time a drug has been linked to a strange or risky change in behavior.
“It is well established that hypersexuality and excessive gambling are associated with levodopa use,” Dr Raymond Playford, one of the paper’s authors, told the Daily Mail. Levodopa, a medication used to treat Parkinson’s disease, has been shown to increase the risk of pathological gambling. Patients who receive the drug are also informed of this potential side effect.
“We advise doctors to also warn patients to watch out for impulses that do not suit them or are unusual and that result in personal costs or repercussions – for example divorce – and to step back and ask themselves “This is a reasonable decision,” Playford said. explained to the Mail.
“‘This warning should allow patients and doctors to reflect and determine whether the decisions made by some patients are out of character and riskier than might be expected,’ the doctor added.
Ozempic, as well as other drugs based on semaglutide or tirzepatide, has been linked to a myriad of side effects – from Ozempic buttocks and breasts to impotence, personality changes and problems uncomfortable gastrointestinal tract.
The paper’s authors acknowledge that they have seen no evidence of gambling or reckless sexual behavior, but do not want to rule out the possibility.
“We have not observed excessive gaming or sexual activity in patients so far, but we would not be surprised if it happened,” Playford noted.
News Source : nypost.com
Gn Health
