ANCONA – There is a hunt to buy semaglutìde in pharmacies, it is the molecule contained in an antidiabetic drug which is also used to lose weight. And on social networks there are several video testimonials that have gone viral, especially among teenagers. The drug, developed to control blood sugar, has also been shown to have a slimming effect and for this reason pharmacies are starting to run short and the risk is that those who need it for health reasons, i.e. to treat diabetes, may remain without it.
“The phenomenon – he explains Marco Cardinali, from the pharmacy of the same name in Osimo – it left at the end of the year and in the Marche region the drug became “off-label” (registered drugs, but used in a different way from that envisaged for the pathology, ed.), for a period it was not more in the normal distribution channels. We have however managed to guarantee it to diabetics through the Codin channel, a hospital warehouse, but we only deliver it to patients with a medical prescription for whom it is loanable. For people who instead use semaglutìde to lose weight, it is provided for a fee ».
The pharmacist explains: «Between January and February we sold several, then the drug began to run short from February and from March 1, however, the distribution channel was closed and for the drug there is a right of first refusal, so to speak reserved for diabetics. So if before, when we received a white recipe with a dietician’s prescription, we delivered it, now it’s no longer possible. The manufacturer of the drug has announced that a specific product will be released from September for those who want to use this molecule only to lose weight”.
The Italian Medicines Agency (Aifa) has included the medicine in the list of medicines in shortage following the increase in demand. Stocks risk dwindling, after some American stars have launched the alternative use, or to lose weight.
The psychologist Marianna Agostinellicoordinator of the Rebirth team of Osimo (treatment and rehabilitation of the pathology of obesity) explains that “the risk is certainly to enhance the dysfunctional behaviors linked to the spasmodic search for weight loss”.
According to the psychologist, there is also a “risk” connected to the ‘fashion’ that is circulating on social networks whose “target is made up of very young people who tend to seek a bodily ideal linked to perfection and aesthetic beauty”.
Dr. Agostinelli also turns the spotlight on «eating disorders, such as bulimia for example: those who suffer from it adopt elimination behaviors such as vomiting and the use of laxatives which are the symptomatic manifestations of the side effects of the molecule. So the advice I can give, given that the drug can only be supplied with a doctor’s prescription, is that doctors evaluate the history of the request with the collaboration of a psychologist in order to exclude discomforts related to dysmorphophobia or psychic discomfort, which can in any case be present wherever there are requirements to prescribe the molecule».