A nurse who took two weight loss injections has died. Susan McGowan, 58, is thought to have become the first fatality connected to the drug recently rolled out by the NHS.
Mounjaro has been billed as the “King Kong” of weight loss jabs and has been prescribed to a quarter of a million patients since last year. It works by making users feel full sooner, thus less hungry to eat excessively.
NHS bed manager at University Hospital Monklands in North Lanarkshire, Scotland, Susan, bought a low dose of Mounjaro privately. Susan’s family said days after her second injection she began experiencing severe stomach pains and sickness. She worked where she was taken to A&E and her colleagues battled to save her life.
Susan’s niece Jade Campbell described her as “bubbly” and “generous”. Jade told the BBC: “It was so quick. I still find myself thinking, ‘has that actually happened?’ Susan had always carried a wee bit of extra weight but there were never any health concerns. She wasn’t on any other medication.
“She was healthy. Susan was such a bubbly person. She was really generous, she was really kind and she was the life of the party – a huge personality. They said she had the biggest laugh in the hospital.”
Known as GLP-1 agonists, weight loss jabs slow digestion and reduce appetite by mimicking hormones which regulate hunger and feelings of fullness. They are designed to act like one of these hormones, known as glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1). The use of Mounjaro, also known as tirzepatide, was recorded as a contributing factor on Susan’s death certificate which lists multiple organ failure, septic shock and pancreatitis as the immediate cause. It is believed to be the first confirmed death linked to a GLP-1 agonist.
For Mounjaro public data is only available up to May this year however between January and May 2024 there were 208 reports of it on the NHS yellow card scheme, including 31 serious reactions and one suspected death of a man in his sixties. The most popular GLP-1 agonist is semaglutide, known by the brand names Wegovy and Ozempic, andhere have been 23 suspected UK deaths linked to it via the yellow card scheme since 2019.
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Dr Alison Cave, chief safety officer at the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said: “Our sincere sympathies are with the family of individual concerned. Patient safety is our top priority and no medicine would be approved unless it met our expected standards of safety, quality and effectiveness. We have robust, safety monitoring and surveillance systems in place for all healthcare products. On the basis of the current evidence the benefits of GLP-1 RAs outweigh the potential risks when used for the licensed indications.”
The BBC reported that the nurse did her own research into the jabs and sought medical advice before she purchased a prescription via a registered online pharmacy. Weight loss injections can be purchased from any registered pharmacy in the UK but buyers are required to enter information about their health.
High demand means the health service has announced a phased rollout of Mounjaro after it was approved for obesity as well as type 2 diabetes. The NHS will trial and gradually scale up online and community support services to enable rollout, as the drug can only be prescribed with weight management support from clinicians. The NHS does not yet have the capacity for this to prescribe Mounjaro to everyone eligible, so will start by offering it to the most severely obese and unwell.