By Maggie Fick and Ludwig Burger
(Reuters) – Novo Nordisk warned on Thursday of a rise in counterfeit versions of its weight-loss drug Wegovy and diabetes drug Ozempic offered online, as German authorities gave more details about complex European trades in a case of fake medicines.
“Novo Nordisk has seen a significant increase in illegal online sales,” the company said in a statement, referring to products containing the active ingredient semaglutide.
Amid a global obesity crisis, Novo this year became Europe’s most valuable company thanks to growing demand for the weekly Wegovy injection and its lower-dose version Ozempic, but that attracted illegal traders who can put users’ health at risk.
Novo’s warnings, previously reported by Danish publication Finans, mark the group’s first detailed comments on the issue of counterfeiting since a mid-June statement regarding fake Ozempic pens found in a U.S. retail pharmacy.
The warning comes after Germany’s federal medicines regulator on Wednesday urged pharmacies and drug distributors to be vigilant following the discovery of bulk batches of fake Ozempic.
Prosecutors in the southwestern German town of Loerrach, near the Swiss border in Basel, said Thursday that 199 packets had been identified as counterfeit from a British drug distributor who bought the lot from a company near Loerrach in September.
That company had in turn received a shipment of a counterpart in Austria, prosecutors said, adding that investigators were trying to find out whether other counterfeits had been sold in Germany.
Novo said the fake U.S. batches had a different serial number than those found in Europe. She declined to comment further on the matter being investigated in Germany.
It said that in principle it reported all cases of counterfeiting encountered to the relevant authorities and, in some cases, it worked with “specialized companies to identify the perpetrators of these crimes”, without naming the countries in which it did so. .
The Danish pharmaceutical company also said it works with a third party specializing in monitoring and removing illegal online offers. It ramped up that work in 2023 to ensure broader reach, he said, declining to name the company he was working with.
In another sign of illicit activity capitalizing on the hype around weight-loss drugs, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Tuesday ordered two online sellers to stop selling unapproved versions of the Novo and Eli Lilly drugs.
In September, Lilly filed lawsuits against medical spas, wellness centers and compounding pharmacies in the United States for selling products claiming to contain tirzepatide, the active ingredient in its diabetes drug Mounjaro , which is expected to be approved for weight loss later this year.
Novo filed a similar lawsuit in July.
Compounding pharmacies combine or modify ingredients to create a medication tailored to the needs of an individual patient. The FDA has warned patients to refrain from using a compounded drug if an approved drug is available.
Demand for Wegovy and Ozempic is outpacing the supply of Novo’s drugs in the United States, Germany and Britain, leading the company to restrict the supply of some doses of Wegovy to the U.S. market.
Although only Wegovy is approved for the treatment of obesity, the fact that Ozempic for diabetes also causes dramatic weight loss has led people in the United States and Europe to use the drug “off-label,” c ‘i.e. not for its approved use.
(Reporting by Maggie Fick and Ludwig Burger; editing by Jan Harvey and Susan Fenton)
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