Gastrointestinal adverse events associated with semaglutide: A pharmacovigilance study based on FDA adverse event reporting system

Background: Semaglutide was approved for treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and chronic weight management in obesity or overweight adults. However, real-world data regarding its long-term gastrointestinal safety and tolerability in large sample population are incomplete. We evaluated semaglutide-associated gastrointestinal safety signals by data mining of the FDA pharmacovigilance database.

Methods: Reporting odds ratio (ROR) was employed to quantify the signals of semaglutide-related gastrointestinal adverse events (AEs) from 2018 to 2022. Serious and non-serious cases were compared by Mann-Whitney U test or Chi-squared (χ²) test, and signals were prioritized using a rating scale.

Results: We identified 5,442 cases of semaglutide-associated gastrointestinal AEs, with 45 signals detected, ranging from a ROR₀₂₅ of 1.01 (hypoaesthesia oral) to 42.03 (eructation), among which 17 AEs were identified as new and unexpected signals. Patient age (p < 0.001) and body weight (p = 0.006) rather than sex (p = 0.251) might be associated with an increased risk of gastrointestinal AEs severity. Notably, the association between semaglutide and gastrointestinal disorders remained when stratified by age, body weight, sex and reporter type. One strong, 22 moderate and 22 weak clinical priority signals were defined. The median time-to-onset (TTO) for strong clinical priority signal was 23 days, while for moderate and weak, they were 6 and 7 days, respectively. All of the disproportionality signals had early failure type features, suggesting that the risk of gastrointestinal AEs occurrence gradually decreased over time.

Conclusion: Our study provided a deeper and broader understanding of semaglutide's gastrointestinal safety profiles, which would help healthcare professionals to mitigate the risk of gastrointestinal AEs in clinical practice.