Shopping for counterfeit weight reduction medicine from unlawful on-line pharmacies that do not require prescriptions is, the truth is, a really unhealthy concept, in accordance with a examine revealed Friday in JAMA Community Open.
The counterfeit medicine are offered as equivalents to the blockbuster semaglutide medicine, Ozempic and Wegovy, that are prescription solely. When researchers obtained their palms on three unlawful variations, they discovered that the counterfeit medicine had low-purity semaglutide, had dosages that exceeded the labeled quantity, and one had indicators of bacterial contamination.
The three substandard medicine examined got here from three totally different unlawful on-line pharmacies, which offered them as generic semaglutide medicine for weight reduction, urge for food suppression, diabetes, and cardiovascular well being. Nevertheless, the researchers, led by scientists on the College of California, San Diego, and the College of Pécs in Hungary, had initially tried buying counterfeit medicine from six such sellers.
Three of the unlawful pharmacies, which particularly offered Ozempic knockoffs, by no means delivered the medicine after researchers paid for them. As an alternative, the researchers had been hit with “nondelivery” scams, during which the sellers requested extra, hefty funds, supposedly wanted to get via customs. These further charges ranged from $650 to $1,200—far more than what the researchers paid for small dosages of the counterfeit medicine, which ranged from $113 to $360 throughout the six sellers.
Rogue pharmacies
The Ozempic scams had been run out of the rogue on-line pharmacies: weightcrunchshop.com, puremedsonline.com, and genius-pharmacy.com. The three pharmacies that delivered doubtful medicine included semaspace.com, uschemlabs.com, and biotechpeptides.com.
Two of the sellers—semaspace.com and uschemlabs.com—have already acquired warning letters from the Meals and Drug Administration for promoting unapproved, misbranded medicine. On the time of publication, the Semaspace web site was not reachable. The US Chem Labs web site was nonetheless accessible, however their semaglutide vials had been all listed as out of inventory.
The examine’s findings, whereas unsurprising, spotlight the chance individuals might soak up efforts to pay money for the favored medicine. Steep costs, lack of insurance coverage protection, and drug shortages have stored the medicine out of attain for a lot of who may gain advantage from them. Compounding pharmacies have stepped in to make copycat variations. Whereas these are authorized and might come from authentic pharmacies—ones which are correctly registered and require prescriptions—in addition they carry dangers. Compounded medicine aren’t accepted by the FDA and will pose security and efficacy dangers. Final week, the FDA warned of accelerating studies of individuals overdosing on semaglutide merchandise made in compounding pharmacies, main some sufferers to be hospitalized.
