Calls to Poison Control Centers in this country jumped in recent years—from an average of around one thousand calls a year prior to 2021 to more than eight thousand per center by 2023. A University of Texas student found it started
when the FDA approved the diabetes drug smaglutide for weight management. Many of the increased calls to poison centers were related to semaglutide. Most cases stemmed from unintentional dosing errors, rather than deliberate misuse. Nonetheless, the UT San Antonio researchers said one common error in using semaglutide for weight loss was injecting it daily instead of once a week. Imagine a medication that is supposed to enter your body as trickle and instead gets a blast seven times greater. The study appears in the Journal of Medical Toxicology.