700 - The Pros, Cons, and Unknowns of Ozempic
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 15 December 2023
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Medications like Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro show lots of promise for treating obesity but scientists still don't understand exactly how they work. There's also a lack of data to show whether these medications are safe to take long term. Dr. Sameer Khan, a Johns Hopkins fellow in gasteroenterology, talks with Dr. Josh Sharfstein about what these medicines are and what they can do, the questions that remain, and why it's a challenge for clinicians to prescribe them and for patients to actually obtain them. Learn more about another one of our projects, the Expert Insights newsletter: publichealth.jhu.edu/subscribe
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, |
| 0:05.9 | where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges. |
| 0:16.3 | If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to Public Health Question at jh.edu. |
| 0:23.8 | That's Public Health Question at jh.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:31.1 | This is Lindsay Smith Rogers. |
| 0:33.4 | Today, OZempic and the New Obesity Medications. |
| 0:37.3 | Dr. Samir Khan is a fellow in gastroenterology at Johns Hopkins. |
| 0:41.6 | He gives Dr. Josh Sharstein a tutorial on what these medicines are, how they work, |
| 0:46.8 | what questions are not yet answered, and how hard it can be to obtain them. |
| 0:51.6 | Let's listen. |
| 0:52.8 | Dr. Samir Khan, thank you so much for coming to public health |
| 0:56.9 | on call to talk about these new medicines that treat obesity. Thanks, Josh. It's my pleasure. I'm |
| 1:06.4 | excited to talk about them. So let's just start with the basics. What are these new medicines and how do they work? |
| 1:13.6 | Okay, great. |
| 1:14.6 | So the ones people have probably been hearing the most about are Ozempic and Wagovi. |
| 1:20.6 | So the pharmaceutical name for these two medicines is semaglutae. |
| 1:25.6 | And this has been plastered all over the news for the past two years. |
| 1:29.3 | And then the one that people, especially diabetics right now, are starting to hear more about is something called Muncharo, which goes by the name of Tersepetide. |
| 1:38.3 | In terms of how they work, that's one of the core questions, because we're still figuring some of that out. We know how they |
| 1:46.4 | work in terms of diabetes because they help our pancreas make insulin after we've eaten |
| 1:52.1 | and our sugar levels start rising. And we know that it helps to also reduce a hormone that causes |
| 1:58.9 | sugar levels to rise in the bloodstream. |
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