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A grandma of 11 and a New Jersey man have joined the growing chorus of users of the wildly popular weight-loss drugs Ozempic and Wegovy who say they didn’t just lose fat — they also lost their eyesight.
New local lawsuits filed by the pair allege the manufacturer hid the “devastating” risk, which left them with a permanent, life-changing loss of vision in both eyes.
“It pains me to think I won’t be able to fully see my grandchildren’s faces and fully experience the biggest moments of my loved ones’ lives,’’ said plaintiff Cilette Mitchell, a 64-year-old grandmother and former vice president at a large commercial bank in California, to The Post.
“Had I known that Ozempic would take my vision, I would have never taken it.”
Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk is accused in the suits of being “deceptive and misleading about the true risks” of the hit GLP-1 obesity drugs, with the legal documents citing multiple studies suggesting that the potential for a blindness-causing “eye stroke” doubles with the use of them.
The lawsuits insist the manufacturer has a responsibility to warn doctors and users “of the complications and devastating effects” of the drugs — which are so popular that they raked in more than $25 billion in global sales last year.
But Novo Nordisk has “failed” to communicate the “clinically relevant information” that a risk of irreversible blindness exists, the suits allege.
The two sight-addled patients filed lawsuits against the drugmaker in New Jersey state court last week. The company’s US headquarters are in Plainsboro, NJ.
Both plaintiffs said in their suits that they began taking the weight-loss drugs in 2023 and, in addition to losing some weight, noticed blurriness in their vision months after their first injection.
Mitchell, a mother of four, said she started noticing “dark, cloudy shadows” in her right eye just three months into her regime, first with Wegovy, and then Ozempic.
An ophthalmologist urged her to rush to the emergency room for an MRI, where she was diagnosed with Non-Arteritic Anterior Ischemic Optic Neuropathy, or NAION, in her right eye, she said.
Things got worse weeks later on Easter Sunday, she said.
“While playing with my grandchildren, the dark clouds started to creep in on my other eye,” Mitchell said.
“The next day, the doctor confirmed that I developed NAION in that eye as well, with the result being permanent vision loss.”
Mitchell, who was near retirement, started taking classes at the San Diego Center for the Blind to see if she would be able to return to her job at the bank — where she could no longer see a computer screen.
But vision and balance issues from NAION have halted working altogether, her suit states.
“Now I need help doing daily activities and navigating life,” Mitchell said.
The New Jersey patient, who declined to comment to The Post, claims in his suit that he was diagnosed with bilateral NAION about a month after he first had issues with his vision.
The man says in his suit that he “can no longer drive, can no longer read, and is completely dependent on his wife for day-to-day assistance.’’
His neuro-ophthalmologist told him that his vision would never recover, the court document states.
The drugmaker said in a statement to The Post that the users’ vision condition, NAION, is “rare” and “not an adverse drug reaction” from its products.
The manufacturer cited its own internal studies and research from the University of Southern Denmark in making the claim.
“Novo Nordisk is of the opinion that the benefit-risk profile of [the alleged culprit ingredient] semaglutide remains unchanged,” a company rep told The Post.
But Craig Silverman, the lawyer for the two patients, said the plaintiffs “strongly reject Novo Nordisk’s dismissive attempt to minimize the serious risks associated with its blockbuster weight loss drugs.”
The two lawsuits cite studies which claim NAION links to the drugs, including 2024 research published in the the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The study found that users of the drugs were far more likely to develop NAION but also notes further research of the causation is needed.
The suits note that the drugmaker’s “warning labels are still devoid of any mention of NAION.”
Other former users of the weight-loss drugs have also recently filed suits against the drugmaker claiming the GLP-1 medications possibly caused their NAION, as well.
English (US)