Advisory Board

Currently, the United States faces a shortage of weight-loss drugs, including Novo Nordisk's Semaglutide, even as manufacturers make efforts to boost production. In July, there were reports of some companies offering "generic" or compounded formulations of Semaglutide amid supply shortages.

According to endocrinologists and obesity medicine specialists, suppliers cannot ensure the safety and quality of these "bootleg" versions of the drug, making them potentially dangerous for patient use. Compound pharmacies "are probably using the same active pharmacological part (Semaglutide), but when you combine things and you add different excipients, the effectiveness — if you don't measure that in a randomized controlled trial — will not be the same," said assistant clinical professor of Internal Medicine at the at University of Arizona College of Medicine – Phoenix Ricardo Correa, MD.