Safety First When Considering Anti-Obesity Medications to social media feeds of many Americans, promotion of these illicitly manufactured anti-obesity medications is seemingly everywhere. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) there are pharmacies, weight loss clinics, and medical spas engaging in compounding Recent years have brought significant advances practices by misrepresenting compounded weight loss in pharmaceutical treatment options to treat obesity. drugs. The FBI notes that these misrepresented drugs Americans living with obesity or overweight now have can pose safety risks and significant health consequences access to powerful anti-obesity medications that help to patients, such as gastrointestinal disorders, nervous control blood glucose and insulin levels and promote system disorders, cardiac disorders, psychiatric disorders, feelings of satiety (feeling full). When taken alongside and death. a healthy diet and physical activity, people taking antiYou may be asking, “What exactly are compounded obesity medications can experience significant weight medications?” According to the FDA, compounding loss, and some of the medications also positively impact is generally a practice in which a licensed pharmacist, several other issues. For example, semaglutide has been a licensed physician or, in the case of an outsourcing found to significantly reduce the risk of major adverse facility, a person under the supervision of a licensed cardiac events in adults with obesity or overweight who pharmacist, combines, mixes, or alters ingredients of a also have heart disease. drug to create a medication tailored to the needs of an Unfortunately, because of the lack of Medicare individual patient. and other insurance coverage for Food and Drug The FDA notes that a drug may be compounded for Administration- (FDA-) approved anti-obesity medications, a patient who cannot be treated with an FDA-approved many Americans, including older adults, are turning to medication, such as a patient who has an allergy to a illicitly manufactured and potentially dangerous copycat certain dye and needs a medication to be made without products. From advertisements during “the big game” it or an older adult or a child who cannot swallow a tablet or capsule and needs a medicine in liquid form. In such situations, practitioners in hospitals, clinics, and other health care facilities sometimes provide compounded drugs. In these situations, compounding can serve an important patient need. Compounders also may prepare compounded versions of a drug on FDA’s drug shortages list if the compounded drug meets certain conditions detailed in federal law. Because of this stipulation by the FDA, compounding certain anti-obesity medications was legally allowable when those medications were on the FDA’s drug shortage list. This is no longer the case as pharmaceutical companies are manufacturing enough of these medications to meet demand Editorial photo via AdobeStock for them. However, illicitly compounded
By Jennifer L. Pettis, MS, RN, CNE Director of Strategic Alliances, Gerontological Society of America
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