It’s the sign of any must-have product on TikTok: the item sails through the air, caught by eager hands. The latest is Ozempic, a diet drug that has been hashtagged on the app some 350 million times. Young women smile to the camera as they catch their dose. They pull injection pens from their packets. Push the needle into their stomachs. And then share how many more pounds they hope to shed over the coming week. In recent times, the diabetes treatment began to be prescribed “off-label” for weight loss – and is available for purchase without a prescription. Its feverish popularity on social media has driven demand so great that there have been global shortages; it is the slimming method du jour in Hollywood too, where A-listers now pay $1,500 per month for the promise of shedding a few pounds.
Ozempic – for which the generic name is semaglutide – works by mimicking a hormone that regulates appetite, by creating the feeling of fullness. The dose is administered via a weekly injection, shown to produce an average reduction of 6 to 15 per cent of their body weight over the course of a year (depending on strength). The drug made manufacturers Novo Nordisk $3.4bn in 2020 alone, with analysts predicting sales to more than double to $7.8bn – particularly when Wegovy, a 2.4mg version of Ozempic approved for NHS use reaches the UK in early 2023.
