Women on weight-loss drugs report surprise pregnancies, giving hope to those made infertile by hormonal disorder PCOS
- Doctors hope to use weight-loss drugs like Ozempic to treat hormonal disorder PCOS after reports of women who face fertility issues getting pregnant on them
- Researchers say the drugs ‘wake up the ovaries’, making women ‘very fertile’, but there is limited information on their safety and more research is needed
A surprising thing is happening to some women on weight-loss drugs who have struggled with fertility issues: they are getting pregnant.
That is leading to questions about the safety during pregnancy of medications Ozempic from healthcare company Novo Nordisk and Mounjaro from medicine company Eli Lilly.
“I thought I couldn’t have any more kids,” said Torria Leggett, 40, who had been trying for another after her first child was born in 2018. In 2022, the social worker from the US state of North Carolina began taking Ozempic to treat obesity, then switched to Mounjaro.
As the pounds melted off, there was soon another reason to celebrate. She was expecting.
“The weight loss, that’s likely what jump-started it,” she said. “I couldn’t believe it.”
Stories like these are encouraging doctors to use these GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide 1) drugs – mainly used to help manage blood sugar levels in people with type 2 diabetes, and more recently to treat obesity – to treat polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), one of the leading causes of infertility globally.