New York City-based online, direct-to-consumer healthcare company Ro has launched a tool to report and track GLP-1 drug shortages across the U.S., it announced May 29.
While the FDA also tracks these drugs and reports if they are in shortage, the new tool from Ro allows patients to report when they run into difficulty finding the drug in their respective regions and compares that to what the FDA is reporting.
For instance, Ozempic is currently not listed by the agency to be in short supply, but as of May 29 Ro's GLP-1 tracker noted 70 patients have reported difficulty finding the medication in .68 mg/1 mL doses.
The tracker also features a map and uses color and emoji markings to denote states where patients have reported the shortages. Right now, patients are reporting shortages of different variations of GLP-1 drugs in Michigan, Texas, North Carolina, Tennessee, Missouri, Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Florida to name a few. The map updates in real-time once a patient submits a report of a shortage in their area.
After a patient reports a shortage, that information is also passed along to the FDA without any additional steps from the patient.
"The GLP-1 shortage challenges are exacerbated by a lack of accurate, up-to-date, and accessible GLP-1 supply information…" Zachariah Reitano, Ro's CEO and co-founder, stated in the news release. "We originally began building this tracker for Ro patients but knew that our scaled supply data and tech expertise positioned us to help all patients (whether [a] Ro patient or not) navigate the shortage and have a greater chance of finding the GLP-1 medications they need."
Here are six other noteworthy updates on GLP-1 medications:
- A $350 genetic test developed by researchers at Mayo Clinic may be able to predict a patient's likelihood of responding well to GLP-1 drugs like Wegovy or Ozempic.
- Most patients taking GLP-1 drugs for weight loss discontinue the medication before a clinically meaningful health benefit is reached, the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association found.
- GLP-1 drugs reduce kidney disease-related incidents by 24%, the risk of a major heart problem by 18% and the risk of death by 20%, according to a study published May 24 in NEJM.
- Eli Lilly announced that it will invest an additional $5.3 billion to ramp up production of its GLP-1 drugs Zepbound and Mounjaro.
- Diabetes patients taking GLP-1 medications may be more at risk for adverse events during or after esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD) surgeries.
- Dandelion Health, a technology startup, created an open GLP-1 data library that includes close to 10 million patient records to help propel research and data sharing on the new drug class.