A 36-year-old mum of three “spent the night” in hospital last month after taking Mounjaro purchased from online pharmacy Curate Health after seeing a Facebook ad from the company, C+D has learned.
Northamptonshire mum Abbie James last month (October 29) told C+D she saw “constant different brands of weight loss medication popping up on Facebook”.
James, who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), said that she “acted on impulse” after seeing a Facebook ad from the online pharmacy.
Read more: GPhC ‘looking into’ two online pharmacies after influencer concerns
She claimed that the ad featured “a belly with a measuring tape around it” and a message of “lose weight fast…why suffer when you can lose weight quicker?”
“Reading that, it was a good choice…I kind of got bought into it” – “it appealed to me as a healthy option” and it “was just so easy to get hold of it”, she added.
Read more: Wegovy: GPhC cracks down on POM discount codes after C+D exposé
C+D has seen Facebook ads for Curate’s weight loss service offering a discount code for “15% off your first order” as well as targeted email ads telling patients they have “just 14 hours left to save 20% off on Mounjaro and Wegovy weight loss pens”.
In August, the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) said that it was “looking into” Curate after C+D learned that it had received claims that TikTok influencers were using Mounjaro discount codes to promote the pharmacy.
But Curate said at the time that the concerns were “historic and no longer active” and that it had “taken control of all marketing activities back in house”.
Read more: Wegovy: Ten deaths linked to weight loss injections, says MHRA
And last month (October 29), the company told C+D that the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) had confirmed to it that the case is now closed regarding previous concerns about Curate’s promotions.
James claimed that she received a discount that she had seen on the ad, bringing the price of her order down from £150 to £140.
Curate told C+D that this was its standard rate – however the company’s website currently (November 11) lists the full price of a Mounjaro starting dose as £150.
“Booming through my chest”
James told C+D that the day after taking her first dose of Mounjaro, her “heart rate was so fast that it was booming through [her] chest” – “I was a bit panicked” and “thought I was going to have a heart attack”.
She also takes antidepressant duloxetine, which can cause palpitations among various other common side effects, according to the British National Formulary (BNF).
C+D has not seen James’ hospital notes regarding the cause of the heart palpitations and symptoms she experienced.
Read more: Wegovy: Pharmacists urged to report ‘misuse’ amid 46 hospitalisations
“I felt I was going to collapse or pass out and I couldn’t carry on not getting checked out and just waiting to have another dose, I wanted it straight out of my body,” she added.
“The ambulance came out to my house and did electrocardiography tests (ECGs) and they said that my blood sugar was so low and…I had increased tachycardia,” she said.
“They sent me up to the hospital and I spent the night up there, and there was nothing they could do to help me apart from waiting for…[it to] start to wear down” – “that is another scary thing, that you can’t reverse what you’ve done,” James added.
“Vulnerable people”
James told C+D that the experience left her feeling “a bit let down”.
“I felt so stupid and embarrassed” – “I just wanted to try and do better for myself, to be more active, to do more things with the kids”, she said.
“It was really impulsive to just think, do you know what, I’m going to do it,” she added.
Read more: ‘It terrifies me’: Girl landed in A&E after buying Wegovy from Boots
“Obviously I know everyone’s different and some medications might do wonders for some and not others,” she said.
“I’ve always been unhappy with my body - they weren’t to know that I was vulnerable, but it’s on social media and I think there’s a lot of vulnerable people on there,” she added.
Weight loss drug deaths
Meanwhile, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) this month revealed that it had received some 10 reports of deaths linked to weight loss injections.
It came after C+D exclusively reported in June that a “young girl” was rushed to A&E for urgent treatment after presenting with life threatening symptoms after taking weight loss GLP-1RA drug Wegovy that she had obtained through Boots Online Doctor.
Read more: Make superintendents ‘responsible’ for stricter Wegovy safeguards, says GPhC
That month, now health secretary Wes Streeting revealed plans for “much closer clinical oversight and regulation” around accessing weight loss drugs from online pharmacies, saying he was “terrified that someone is going to die”.
In September, the GPhC announced plans to consult on a raft of “additional safeguards” that online pharmacies offering weight loss drugs must provide, including verifying information provided by patients.
Read more: NHSE proposes offering Mounjaro to nearly 250,000 people over three years
The proposed “extra safeguards” would require pharmacies prescribing or supplying medicines “associated with greater risks including those used for weight loss” to “independently verify the person’s weight, height and/or body mass index (BMI)”.
They also proposed making the superintendent pharmacists responsible for meeting the guidance.
