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DTT 2023; 2(1): 41-48
Published online March 31, 2023
https://doi.org/10.58502/DTT.23.0003
Copyright © The Pharmaceutical Society of Korea.
Hyun-Myung Back1* 
, Seo-A Choi1* , Myeong Gyu Kim1,2
Correspondence to:Myeong Gyu Kim, kimmg@ewha.ac.kr
*These authors contributed equally to this study.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists became the most prescribed drugs for weight loss. This study aimed to investigate adverse events of GLP-1 receptor agonists using Twitter and KIDS-KAERS database (KIDS-KD). 116 Korean tweets on Twitter and 1,701 liraglutide-adverse event combinations from KIDS-KD were used for analysis. The most common adverse events were nausea (37.76%), vomiting (12.59%), dyspepsia (9.79%), dizziness (4.90%), and somnolence (4.90%) on Twitter. Adverse events observed in the post-marketing surveillance such as somnolence, myalgia, chest pain/ discomfort, and parosmia were found on Twitter. In KIDS-KD, injection site rash (13.46%), injection site pruritus (10.76%), nausea (10.64%), vomiting (6.41%), and injection site reaction (5.29%) were commonly reported. Signals were injection site rash (reporting odds ratio [ROR] = 616.1), injection site pruritus (ROR = 477.7), vomiting (ROR = 2.4), injection site reaction (ROR = 222.0), pruritus (ROR = 2.5), injection site bruising (ROR = 45.8), injection site pain (ROR = 36.3). Subgroup analysis revealed that injection site rash (n = 16, ROR = 46.6) and acne (n = 3, ROR = 39.2) met signal criteria in men and women, respectively. Twitter analysis identified adverse events that were not found in clinical trials, and KIDS-KD subgroup analysis suggested the possibility of acne being a safety signal. Social media and KIDS-KD were useful for pharmacovigilance.
KeywordsGLP-1 receptor agonists, KIDS-KAERS database (KIDS-KD), pharmacovigilance, adverse events, Twitter
Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) is an incretin peptide secreted from intestinal endocrine cells and enhances glucose-dependent insulin secretion from pancreatic β-cells (Hinnen 2017; Mosavat et al. 2020; Ja'arah et al. 2021). For this reason, GLP-1 receptor agonists were approved as antidiabetic drugs. GLP-1 receptor agonists also support weight loss through delayed gastric emptying, reduced fat absorption, and reduced food intake (Baggio and Drucker 2021). Liraglutide, a GLP-1 receptor agonist, was previously approved for the treatment of type 2 diabetes under the brand name Victoza®. Saxenda®, another brand name for liraglutide, was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in December 2014 for the treatment of obesity (Nuffer and Trujillo 2015). Semaglutide was also approved for diabetes treatment (Ozempic® and Rybelsus®) in December 2017 and weight loss (Wegovy®) in June 2021 (Singh et al. 2022).
While appetite suppressants acting on the central nervous system are addictive and have side effects such as paresthesia, depression, insomnia, decreased concentration, and hallucinations (Bray 2014), GLP-1 receptor agonists are relatively safe and thus in the spotlight as a novel weight loss drug. The most common adverse events of GLP-1 receptor agonists include nausea, diarrhea, constipation, vomiting, injection site reactions, headache, hypoglycemia, and dyspepsia (Astrup et al. 2009; Pi-Sunyer et al. 2015; Rubino et al. 2021; Wilding et al. 2021).
Real-world data can have different implications from the controlled environment of clinical trials. People who are not overweight or obese also administer drugs to lose weight. In addition, long-term or rare adverse events that were not observed during clinical trials can be observed in real-world settings. The use of social media has grown exponentially over the past few years, which has become a major source of information. With the prosperity of social networks, people have become more inclined to post prescription drugs and related adverse events and share their treatment experiences (Harpaz et al. 2012; Harpaz et al. 2014). By sharing thoughts and experiences with a vast number of users, social media such as Twitter has become a useful resource for post-marketing surveillance of drugs, complementing existing pharmacovigilance systems (Sarker et al. 2015; Farooq et al. 2021). Pharmacovigilance through social media can detect adverse events before the regulatory agency’s action (Lee et al. 2021). Furthermore, real-world studies in South Korea mainly use claim data from the Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service, but there is a limitation in that non-reimbursable drugs are excluded. Since GLP-1 receptor agonists used for weight loss are non-reimbursable drugs, studies using social media are appropriate.
Spontaneous adverse event reports are another real-world data specialized for adverse events. The Korea Institute of Drug Safety & Risk Management (Ministry of Food and Drug Safety) provides Korea Adverse Event Reporting System (KAERS) database (KIDS-KD) for pharmacovigilance analysis (Shin et al. 2021). Several studies have shown that signals of adverse events were detected by data mining on KIDS-KD.
This study aimed to investigate adverse events of GLP-1 receptor agonists (Saxenda® and Wegovy®) used for weight loss in South Korea using Twitter and KIDS-KD.
Tweets which were posted from August 2017 (Saxenda® was approved in South Korea on July 21, 2017) to June 2022 were collected with restrictions in the Korean language using the following search query: ‘삭센다’ (Saxenda in Korean) OR ‘삭샌다’ (Saxenda in Korean) OR ‘위고비’ (Wegovy in Korean) OR ‘리라글루타이드’ (liraglutide in Korean) OR ‘리라글루티드’ (liraglutide in Korean) OR ‘세마글루타이드’ (semaglutide in Korean) OR ‘세마글루티드’ (semaglutide in Korean). Although Wegovy® is not currently marketed in South Korea, it is included in the search because it may be mentioned on social media. Tweet search was conducted on July 6, 2022, using Python version 3.7 (Python Software Foundation, Fredericksburg, VA, USA) and Twitter application programming interface for academic research. The collected data included user identifier, tweet text, date posted, and the number of retweets, replies, likes, and quote tweets. The study was exempted from Institutional Review Board review (ewha-202203-0027-01).
All tweets were manually labeled. First, tweets that were unrelated to the GLP-1 receptor agonists were excluded. Second, tweets were classified as tweets mentioning adverse events or not. Tweets mentioning adverse events were further classified as first-hand experience or non-first-hand experience. Non-first-hand experience included adverse events from news, study results, or someone else’s experience. The adverse events mentioned in the tweet were coded as Medical Dictionary for Regulatory Activities (MedDRA) Preferred Terms version 25.0.
The annual frequency of tweets mentioning adverse events, the number of adverse events per tweet, and the number of adverse event tweets per user were analyzed. The number of adverse events was analyzed by MedDRA Preferred Terms. Drug labels in South Korea (Ministry of Food and Drug Safety 2022) and United States (U.S. Food and Drug Administration 2022), and Micromedex® (www.micromedexsolutions.com) were reviewed to identify adverse events that have been listed.
From August 2017 to December 2020, adverse event reports including liraglutide or other antiobesity drugs (the Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical [ATC] Classification System code A08) were provided by KIDS. The data consisted of eight tables: basic information (ADR_REPORT_BASIC), drug information (DRUG_INFO_ADR), adverse drug reaction information (ADR_INFO_REPORT), seriousness of AEs (SERIOUS_ADR), reporter information (REPORTOR_ADR), causality assessment (ASSESSMENT_ADR), medical history (DISEASE_HIST_ADR), and group information (GROUP).
Only initial reports were used for analysis. By reviewing drug information and medical history, reports with a history of diabetes or antidiabetic drugs were removed to exclude cases where liraglutide was used for diabetes treatment. If there was no record of medical history or concurrent medications, it was difficult to determine whether the data was truly missing, so they were included in the analysis. From the causality assessment table, only reports that liraglutide or other antiobesity drugs were assessed as 'certain', 'probable', and 'possible' remained for the disproportionality analysis. If information for causality assessment was missing, it was excluded from the subsequent analysis.
A 2-by-2 table was constructed from the drug and adverse event combination (Table 1). From the table, proportional reporting ratio (PRR), reporting odds ratio (ROR), and information component (IC) were calculated as Table 2 (Choi et al. 2021). Signals that met the three criteria of PRR, ROR, and IC were identified.
Table 1 2 × 2 table for disproportionality analysis
| Specific adverse event | Other adverse events | |
|---|---|---|
| Liraglutide | A | B |
| Other antiobesity drugs | C | D |
Table 2 Definition and criteria of signal detection for each indicator
| Definition | Criteria of signal detection | |
|---|---|---|
| PRR | (A/(A+B))/ (C/(C+D)) | PRR ≥ 2, chi-squared ≥ 4, and A ≥ 3 |
| ROR | (A/B)/ (C/D) | ROR ≥ 2, chi-squared ≥ 4, and A ≥ 3 |
| IC | Log2 (P(AE, drug)/ P(AE) × P(drug)) | Under limit of 95% confidence interval ≥ 0 |
IC, information component; PRR, proportional reporting ratio; ROR, reporting odds ratio.
Subgroup analysis was conducted according to sex. Based on sex information recorded in the basic information table (PTNT_SEX = 1 or 2), PRR, ROR, and IC values were calculated by sex. Cases with missing sex information were excluded from the subgroup analysis.
Data processing and statistical analyses were performed using SAS 9.4 (SAS Institute Inc, Cary NC). Drug labels in South Korea (Ministry of Food and Drug Safety 2022) and United States (U.S. Food and Drug Administration 2022), and Micromedex® were reviewed to identify adverse events that have been listed.
Fig. 1 shows a tweet processing diagram. A total of 2,499 Korean tweets were collected. Of 2,499 tweets, 235 tweets mentioned adverse events. Finally, 116 first-hand experience tweets from 73 users were used for analysis.
Figure 1.Tweet processing diagram.
The annual frequency of tweets is shown in Fig. 2. An average of 20 tweets per year from 2018 to 2021 mentioned adverse events. In 2022, 36 tweets mentioned adverse events by the first half. Most tweets contained one (n = 94, 81.0%) or two (n = 18, 15.5%) adverse events in their text. Three tweets (2.6%) contained three adverse events and one tweet (0.9%) contained four adverse events. Most users posted one (n = 54, 74.0%) or two (n = 10, 13.7%) tweets mentioning adverse events.
Figure 2.Annual frequency of tweets. A solid line indicates the number of adverse event tweets which were first-hand experience. A dotted line indicates percentage of adverse event tweets to total tweets mentioning GLP-1 receptor agonists.
Table 3 shows MedDRA Preferred Terms sorted in the order frequently mentioned on tweets. Of 143 adverse events mentioned on tweets, two were not classified as Preferred Terms because they used a broader term. The top five adverse events were nausea (n = 54, 37.76%), vomiting (n = 18, 12.59%), dyspepsia (n = 14, 9.79%), dizziness (n = 7, 4.90%), and somnolence (n = 7, 4.90%).
Table 3 Adverse events of GLP-1 receptor agonists mentioned on Twitter
| Preferred terms | Number of mentioning (n = 143)a | Notoriety |
|---|---|---|
| Nausea | 54 (37.76) | K/U/M |
| Vomiting | 18 (12.59) | K/U/M |
| Dyspepsia | 14 (9.79) | K/U/M |
| Dizziness | 7 (4.90) | K/U/M |
| Somnolence | 7 (4.90) | Kb/Uc |
| Injection site reaction | 5 (3.50) | K/U/M |
| Diarrhoea | 3 (2.10) | K/U/M |
| Myalgia | 2 (1.40) | Kb |
| Abdominal pain | 2 (1.40) | K/U/M |
| Insomnia | 2 (1.40) | K/U |
| Headache | 2 (1.40) | K/U/M |
| Fatigue | 2 (1.40) | K/U/M |
| Hypoglycaemia | 2 (1.40) | K/U/M |
| Flatulence | 2 (1.40) | K/U/M |
| Injection site bruising | 2 (1.40) | I |
| Injection site rash | 2 (1.40) | I |
| Chest pain | 1 (0.70) | Kb |
| Chest discomfort | 1 (0.70) | Kb |
| Urticaria | 1 (0.70) | K/U/M |
| Asthenia | 1 (0.70) | K/U/M |
| Increased appetite | 1 (0.70) | No |
| Urine abnormality | 1 (0.70) | No |
| Vision blurred | 1 (0.70) | Uc |
| Allergy | 1 (0.70) | K/U |
| Rhinitis | 1 (0.70) | No |
| Dermatitis acneiform | 1 (0.70) | No |
| Depression | 1 (0.70) | U/M |
| Parosmia | 1 (0.70) | Kb |
| Gastrooesophageal reflux disease | 1 (0.70) | K/U/M |
| Injection site pruritus | 1 (0.70) | I |
| Disturbance in attention | 1 (0.70) | No |
| Unclassifiable | 2 (1.40) | . |
I, included in injection site reaction; K, listed on the drug label (Saxenda®) in South Korea; M, listed on the Micromedex® (liraglutide and semaglutide); U, listed on the drug labels (Saxenda® and Wegovy®) in United States.
aValues are presented as n (%).
bReported from post-marketing surveillance in South Korea.
cSuggested as signs and symptoms of hypoglycemia.
Adverse events such as somnolence, myalgia, chest pain, chest discomfort, and parosmia identified in tweets are only recorded in the Korean label. This is because they were not originally reported in clinical trials for approval, but rather reported in the post-marketing surveillance conducted in Korea over four years with 670 subjects.
Fig. 3 shows a KIDS-KD processing diagram. From August 2017 to December 2020, there were 3,281 reports for liraglutide or antiobesity drugs in KIDS-KD. A total of 1,701 liraglutide- adverse event combinations and 1,976 other antiobesity drugs-adverse event combinations were used for disproportionality analysis. Table 4 shows the characteristics of adverse event reports on liraglutide and other antiobesity drugs. Adverse events were primarily reported by women aged 35 to 55, and were reported by the patients through the pharmaceutical company.
Table 4 Characteristics of adverse events reports on liraglutide and other antiobesity drugs
| Characteristics | Liraglutide (n = 989) | Other antiobesity drugs (n = 1,197) |
|---|---|---|
| Age, median (IQR), years | 45 (35-55) | 42 (33-52) |
| Sex, n (%) | ||
| Men | 113 (11.4) | 140 (11.7) |
| Women | 723 (73.1) | 973 (81.3) |
| Not reported | 153 (15.5) | 84 (7.0) |
| Reporting year, n (%) | ||
| 2017 | 2 (0.2) | 157 (15.9) |
| 2018 | 199 (20.1) | 304 (30.7) |
| 2019 | 401 (40.6) | 428 (43.3) |
| 2020 | 387 (39.1) | 308 (31.1) |
| Original reporter, n (%) | ||
| Doctor | 48 (4.8) | 283 (23.6) |
| Pharmacist | 45 (4.6) | 584 (48.8) |
| Nurse | 89 (9.0) | 62 (5.2) |
| Customer | 710 (71.8) | 75 (6.3) |
| Others | 73 (7.4) | 6 (0.5) |
| Not reported | 24 (2.4) | 187 (15.6) |
| Reporter group, n (%) | ||
| Manufacturer | 834 (84.3) | 390 (32.6) |
| Regional PV center | 146 (14.8) | 790 (66.0) |
| Others | 9 (0.9) | 17 (1.4) |
| Seriousness, n (%) | ||
| Yes | 7 (0.7) | 21 (1.8) |
| No | 982 (99.3) | 1,176 (98.2) |
IQR, interquartile range; PV, pharmacovigilance.
Figure 3.KIDS-KD processing diagram.
The adverse events that account for ≥ 1% of the adverse events reported for liraglutide are shown in Table 5. Injection site rash (n = 229, 13.46%), injection site pruritus (n = 183, 10.76%), nausea (n = 181, 10.64%), vomiting (n = 109, 6.41%), and injection site reaction (n = 90, 5.29%) were the most commonly reported adverse events of liraglutide.
Table 5 Adverse events of GLP-1 receptor agonists from KIDS-KD
| Preferred terms | Liraglutide (n = 1,701)a | Other antiobesity drugs (n = 1,976)a | ROR | PRR | ICb | Notoriety |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Injection site rash | 229 (13.46) | 0 (0)c | 533.2 | 616.1 | 0.85 | I |
| Injection site pruritus | 183 (10.76) | 0 (0)c | 426.3 | 477.7 | 0.81 | I |
| Nausea | 181 (10.64) | 133 (6.73) | 1.58 | 1.65 | 0.06 | K/U/M |
| Vomiting | 109 (6.41) | 54 (2.73) | 2.34 | 2.44 | 0.18 | K/U/M |
| Injection site reaction | 90 (5.29) | 0 (0)c | 210.2 | 222.0 | 0.68 | K/U/M |
| Diarrhoea | 65 (3.82) | 44 (2.23) | 1.72 | 1.74 | −0.07 | K/U/M |
| Dyspepsia | 58 (3.41) | 59 (2.99) | 1.14 | 1.15 | −0.35 | K/U/M |
| Headache | 56 (3.29) | 204 (10.32) | 0.32 | 0.30 | −1.51 | K/U/M |
| Pruritus | 47 (2.76) | 22 (1.11) | 2.48 | 2.52 | 0.02 | Kd/U/M |
| Abdominal pain | 47 (2.76) | 39 (1.97) | 1.40 | 1.41 | −0.27 | K/U/M |
| Dizziness | 44 (2.59) | 155 (7.84) | 0.33 | 0.31 | −1.52 | K/U/M |
| Constipation | 36 (2.12) | 70 (3.54) | 0.60 | 0.59 | −0.98 | K/U/M |
| Rash | 35 (2.06) | 14 (0.71) | 2.90 | 2.94 | −0.001 | Kd/U/M |
| Urticaria | 35 (2.06) | 21 (1.06) | 1.94 | 1.96 | −0.17 | K/U/M |
| Fatigue | 22 (1.29) | 11 (0.56) | 2.32 | 2.34 | −0.25 | K/U/M |
| Injection site bruising | 19 (1.12) | 0 (0)c | 45.3 | 45.8 | 0.16 | I |
| Insomnia | 17 (1.00) | 303 (15.33) | 0.07 | 0.06 | −3.77 | K/U |
| Others (< 1% frequency) | 428 (25.16) | 847 (42.86) | . | . | . | . |
I, included in injection site reaction; IC, information component; K, listed on the drug label (Saxenda®) in South Korea; M, listed on the Micromedex® (liraglutide and semaglutide); PRR, proportional reporting ratio; ROR, reporting odds ratio; U, listed on the drug labels (Saxenda® and Wegovy®) in United States.
aValues are presented as n (%).
bUnder limit of 95% confidence interval.
cAdding 0.5 to all cells before disproportionality analysis.
dReported from post-marketing surveillance in South Korea.
Seven signals that met three criteria were detected from KIDS-KD: injection site rash (ROR = 616.1), injection site pruritus (ROR = 477.7), vomiting (ROR = 2.4), injection site reaction (ROR = 222.0), pruritus (ROR = 2.5), injection site bruising (ROR = 45.8), injection site pain (ROR = 36.3). All signals were listed on drug labels in South Korea, United states, and Micromedex®.
Subgroup analysis revealed that injection site rash (n = 16, ROR = 46.6) and acne (n = 3, ROR = 39.2) met signal criteria in men and women, respectively. Acne is not currently included in either drug label or Micromedex®.
This study investigated adverse events of GLP-1 receptor agonists used for weight loss. On Twitter, nausea, vomiting, and dyspepsia were reported most frequently. Gastrointestinal adverse events were also common in clinical trials. In a 20-week trial including 564 obese adults, nausea and vomiting occurred in 34.8% and 9.7% of liraglutide group, respectively (Astrup et al. 2009). In a 56-week trial involving 3,731 adults with overweight or obesity, the most common adverse events in the liraglutide group were nausea (40.2%), diarrhea (20.9%), constipation (20.0%), and vomiting (16.3%) (Pi-Sunyer et al. 2015). Similarly, in a study for adolescents with obesity, the most common adverse events of liraglutide were nausea (42.4%) and vomiting (34.4%) (Kelly et al. 2020). Social media has a lower threshold for the general public to report adverse events than spontaneous reporting systems. Therefore, adverse events that do not require professional expertise, especially gastrointestinal adverse events, are likely to be easily reported.
From Twitter, adverse events such as somnolence, myalgia, chest pain, chest discomfort, and parosmia were also detected. These adverse events were not reported in clinical trials for approval (Pi-Sunyer et al. 2015), but were observed in four year of post-marketing surveillance (Ministry of Food and Drug Safety 2022). In particular, parosmia is a rare adverse event that only 30 cases of liraglutide have been reported in the international pharmacovigilance database of the World Health Organization (Merino et al. 2022). The adverse events observed in post-marketing surveillance were identified on Twitter, indicating the usefulness of pharmacovigilance using Twitter.
Pharmacovigilance using tweets has some disadvantages. First, tweets are less reliable because they are written by users without medical staff intervention. For this reason, an adverse event that have mentioned only once in a tweet and have never been reported by other sources may have been caused by other causes or falsely written. For this reason, it is not certain that adverse events such as increased appetite, urine abnormality, disturbance in attention, and rhinitis are adverse events caused by GLP-1 receptor agonists. Second, the number of Korean tweets referring to adverse events is still small. Nevertheless, the number of tweets mentioning Saxenda® increased in 2022 and Wegovy® is expected to be introduced in South Korea, thus more adverse event tweets are expected to be available in the future.
From KIDS-KD, the most frequently reported adverse events were injection site rash and pruritus. These adverse events have been reported more frequently than nausea and vomiting. These results are different from those of clinical trials. The adverse events derived as safety signals of GLP-1 receptor agonists were already known and could not present a new insight. Nevertheless, KIDS-KD has some advantages over pharmacovigilance using Twitter. Causal relationships are classified into ‘certain’, ‘probable’, ‘possible’, ‘unlikely’, ‘unclassified’, ‘assessable’, and ‘not applicable’ by experts. Therefore, adverse events that can be causally related to drugs can be identified (Yi et al. 2019). In addition, statistical criteria for deriving safety signals such as ROR, PRR, and IC have been established.
Acne or dermatitis acneiform was found on Twitter and derived as signal in the subgroup analysis of KIDS-KD. GLP-1 receptor agonists enhance insulin secretion (Nuffer and Trujillo 2015). Increased insulin levels increase insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1) levels (Baldwin and Tan 2021). IGF-1 directly or by lowering forkhead box class O transcription factor 1 (FoxO1) level, increases sebum production and induces hyperplasia of keratinocytes (Baldwin and Tan 2021). Excess sebum production and hyperkeratinization develop acne (Baldwin and Tan 2021). However, due to the small number of cases, further research on causality and mechanisms is needed.
This study has several limitations. First, data was limited to Korean tweets and KIDS-KD. People in South Korea post tweets less than in other countries and the number of KIDS-KD data is also significantly smaller than that of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS). Second, not all people who have experienced adverse events report through Twitter or spontaneous reporting systems. Adverse events are likely to be underreported, and the total number of patients administered the drug is unknown. Therefore, it is impossible to identify the incidences of adverse events. Third, Twitter, and some KIDS-KD data, are missing detailed information on demographic (i.e., age, sex), drug use (i.e., dose, number of administrations), and adverse events (i.e., date of occurrence, seriousness). Last, in the disproportionality analysis, other antiobesity drugs (ATC A08 drugs) were used instead of all other drugs. Thus, some signals might not be detected. In addition, since the compared drugs were orally administered, there were no reported cases of adverse events at the injection site, which led to abnormally high ROR values for adverse events at the injection site.
In this study, adverse events of GLP-1 receptor agonists used for weight loss were investigated using real-world data. Twitter analysis identified adverse events that were not found in clinical trials, and KIDS-KD subgroup analysis suggested the possibility of acne being a safety signal. Social media or spontaneous reporting system are meaningful as real-world data for pharmacovigilance. Further research using larger data is needed to confirm our results.
The authors greatly appreciate the Korea Institute of Drug Safety & Risk Management (Ministry of Food and Drug Safety) for providing the KIDS-KAERS database (KIDS-KD) for this study.
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
DTT 2023; 2(1): 41-48
Published online March 31, 2023 https://doi.org/10.58502/DTT.23.0003
Copyright © The Pharmaceutical Society of Korea.
Hyun-Myung Back1* , Seo-A Choi1* , Myeong Gyu Kim1,2
1College of Pharmacy, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Korea
2Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Korea
Correspondence to:Myeong Gyu Kim, kimmg@ewha.ac.kr
*These authors contributed equally to this study.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists became the most prescribed drugs for weight loss. This study aimed to investigate adverse events of GLP-1 receptor agonists using Twitter and KIDS-KAERS database (KIDS-KD). 116 Korean tweets on Twitter and 1,701 liraglutide-adverse event combinations from KIDS-KD were used for analysis. The most common adverse events were nausea (37.76%), vomiting (12.59%), dyspepsia (9.79%), dizziness (4.90%), and somnolence (4.90%) on Twitter. Adverse events observed in the post-marketing surveillance such as somnolence, myalgia, chest pain/ discomfort, and parosmia were found on Twitter. In KIDS-KD, injection site rash (13.46%), injection site pruritus (10.76%), nausea (10.64%), vomiting (6.41%), and injection site reaction (5.29%) were commonly reported. Signals were injection site rash (reporting odds ratio [ROR] = 616.1), injection site pruritus (ROR = 477.7), vomiting (ROR = 2.4), injection site reaction (ROR = 222.0), pruritus (ROR = 2.5), injection site bruising (ROR = 45.8), injection site pain (ROR = 36.3). Subgroup analysis revealed that injection site rash (n = 16, ROR = 46.6) and acne (n = 3, ROR = 39.2) met signal criteria in men and women, respectively. Twitter analysis identified adverse events that were not found in clinical trials, and KIDS-KD subgroup analysis suggested the possibility of acne being a safety signal. Social media and KIDS-KD were useful for pharmacovigilance.
Keywords: GLP-1 receptor agonists, KIDS-KAERS database (KIDS-KD), pharmacovigilance, adverse events, Twitter
Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) is an incretin peptide secreted from intestinal endocrine cells and enhances glucose-dependent insulin secretion from pancreatic β-cells (Hinnen 2017; Mosavat et al. 2020; Ja'arah et al. 2021). For this reason, GLP-1 receptor agonists were approved as antidiabetic drugs. GLP-1 receptor agonists also support weight loss through delayed gastric emptying, reduced fat absorption, and reduced food intake (Baggio and Drucker 2021). Liraglutide, a GLP-1 receptor agonist, was previously approved for the treatment of type 2 diabetes under the brand name Victoza®. Saxenda®, another brand name for liraglutide, was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in December 2014 for the treatment of obesity (Nuffer and Trujillo 2015). Semaglutide was also approved for diabetes treatment (Ozempic® and Rybelsus®) in December 2017 and weight loss (Wegovy®) in June 2021 (Singh et al. 2022).
While appetite suppressants acting on the central nervous system are addictive and have side effects such as paresthesia, depression, insomnia, decreased concentration, and hallucinations (Bray 2014), GLP-1 receptor agonists are relatively safe and thus in the spotlight as a novel weight loss drug. The most common adverse events of GLP-1 receptor agonists include nausea, diarrhea, constipation, vomiting, injection site reactions, headache, hypoglycemia, and dyspepsia (Astrup et al. 2009; Pi-Sunyer et al. 2015; Rubino et al. 2021; Wilding et al. 2021).
Real-world data can have different implications from the controlled environment of clinical trials. People who are not overweight or obese also administer drugs to lose weight. In addition, long-term or rare adverse events that were not observed during clinical trials can be observed in real-world settings. The use of social media has grown exponentially over the past few years, which has become a major source of information. With the prosperity of social networks, people have become more inclined to post prescription drugs and related adverse events and share their treatment experiences (Harpaz et al. 2012; Harpaz et al. 2014). By sharing thoughts and experiences with a vast number of users, social media such as Twitter has become a useful resource for post-marketing surveillance of drugs, complementing existing pharmacovigilance systems (Sarker et al. 2015; Farooq et al. 2021). Pharmacovigilance through social media can detect adverse events before the regulatory agency’s action (Lee et al. 2021). Furthermore, real-world studies in South Korea mainly use claim data from the Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service, but there is a limitation in that non-reimbursable drugs are excluded. Since GLP-1 receptor agonists used for weight loss are non-reimbursable drugs, studies using social media are appropriate.
Spontaneous adverse event reports are another real-world data specialized for adverse events. The Korea Institute of Drug Safety & Risk Management (Ministry of Food and Drug Safety) provides Korea Adverse Event Reporting System (KAERS) database (KIDS-KD) for pharmacovigilance analysis (Shin et al. 2021). Several studies have shown that signals of adverse events were detected by data mining on KIDS-KD.
This study aimed to investigate adverse events of GLP-1 receptor agonists (Saxenda® and Wegovy®) used for weight loss in South Korea using Twitter and KIDS-KD.
Tweets which were posted from August 2017 (Saxenda® was approved in South Korea on July 21, 2017) to June 2022 were collected with restrictions in the Korean language using the following search query: ‘삭센다’ (Saxenda in Korean) OR ‘삭샌다’ (Saxenda in Korean) OR ‘위고비’ (Wegovy in Korean) OR ‘리라글루타이드’ (liraglutide in Korean) OR ‘리라글루티드’ (liraglutide in Korean) OR ‘세마글루타이드’ (semaglutide in Korean) OR ‘세마글루티드’ (semaglutide in Korean). Although Wegovy® is not currently marketed in South Korea, it is included in the search because it may be mentioned on social media. Tweet search was conducted on July 6, 2022, using Python version 3.7 (Python Software Foundation, Fredericksburg, VA, USA) and Twitter application programming interface for academic research. The collected data included user identifier, tweet text, date posted, and the number of retweets, replies, likes, and quote tweets. The study was exempted from Institutional Review Board review (ewha-202203-0027-01).
All tweets were manually labeled. First, tweets that were unrelated to the GLP-1 receptor agonists were excluded. Second, tweets were classified as tweets mentioning adverse events or not. Tweets mentioning adverse events were further classified as first-hand experience or non-first-hand experience. Non-first-hand experience included adverse events from news, study results, or someone else’s experience. The adverse events mentioned in the tweet were coded as Medical Dictionary for Regulatory Activities (MedDRA) Preferred Terms version 25.0.
The annual frequency of tweets mentioning adverse events, the number of adverse events per tweet, and the number of adverse event tweets per user were analyzed. The number of adverse events was analyzed by MedDRA Preferred Terms. Drug labels in South Korea (Ministry of Food and Drug Safety 2022) and United States (U.S. Food and Drug Administration 2022), and Micromedex® (www.micromedexsolutions.com) were reviewed to identify adverse events that have been listed.
From August 2017 to December 2020, adverse event reports including liraglutide or other antiobesity drugs (the Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical [ATC] Classification System code A08) were provided by KIDS. The data consisted of eight tables: basic information (ADR_REPORT_BASIC), drug information (DRUG_INFO_ADR), adverse drug reaction information (ADR_INFO_REPORT), seriousness of AEs (SERIOUS_ADR), reporter information (REPORTOR_ADR), causality assessment (ASSESSMENT_ADR), medical history (DISEASE_HIST_ADR), and group information (GROUP).
Only initial reports were used for analysis. By reviewing drug information and medical history, reports with a history of diabetes or antidiabetic drugs were removed to exclude cases where liraglutide was used for diabetes treatment. If there was no record of medical history or concurrent medications, it was difficult to determine whether the data was truly missing, so they were included in the analysis. From the causality assessment table, only reports that liraglutide or other antiobesity drugs were assessed as 'certain', 'probable', and 'possible' remained for the disproportionality analysis. If information for causality assessment was missing, it was excluded from the subsequent analysis.
A 2-by-2 table was constructed from the drug and adverse event combination (Table 1). From the table, proportional reporting ratio (PRR), reporting odds ratio (ROR), and information component (IC) were calculated as Table 2 (Choi et al. 2021). Signals that met the three criteria of PRR, ROR, and IC were identified.
Table 1 . 2 × 2 table for disproportionality analysis.
| Specific adverse event | Other adverse events | |
|---|---|---|
| Liraglutide | A | B |
| Other antiobesity drugs | C | D |
Table 2 . Definition and criteria of signal detection for each indicator.
| Definition | Criteria of signal detection | |
|---|---|---|
| PRR | (A/(A+B))/ (C/(C+D)) | PRR ≥ 2, chi-squared ≥ 4, and A ≥ 3 |
| ROR | (A/B)/ (C/D) | ROR ≥ 2, chi-squared ≥ 4, and A ≥ 3 |
| IC | Log2 (P(AE, drug)/ P(AE) × P(drug)) | Under limit of 95% confidence interval ≥ 0 |
IC, information component; PRR, proportional reporting ratio; ROR, reporting odds ratio..
Subgroup analysis was conducted according to sex. Based on sex information recorded in the basic information table (PTNT_SEX = 1 or 2), PRR, ROR, and IC values were calculated by sex. Cases with missing sex information were excluded from the subgroup analysis.
Data processing and statistical analyses were performed using SAS 9.4 (SAS Institute Inc, Cary NC). Drug labels in South Korea (Ministry of Food and Drug Safety 2022) and United States (U.S. Food and Drug Administration 2022), and Micromedex® were reviewed to identify adverse events that have been listed.
Fig. 1 shows a tweet processing diagram. A total of 2,499 Korean tweets were collected. Of 2,499 tweets, 235 tweets mentioned adverse events. Finally, 116 first-hand experience tweets from 73 users were used for analysis.
Figure 1. Tweet processing diagram.
The annual frequency of tweets is shown in Fig. 2. An average of 20 tweets per year from 2018 to 2021 mentioned adverse events. In 2022, 36 tweets mentioned adverse events by the first half. Most tweets contained one (n = 94, 81.0%) or two (n = 18, 15.5%) adverse events in their text. Three tweets (2.6%) contained three adverse events and one tweet (0.9%) contained four adverse events. Most users posted one (n = 54, 74.0%) or two (n = 10, 13.7%) tweets mentioning adverse events.
Figure 2. Annual frequency of tweets. A solid line indicates the number of adverse event tweets which were first-hand experience. A dotted line indicates percentage of adverse event tweets to total tweets mentioning GLP-1 receptor agonists.
Table 3 shows MedDRA Preferred Terms sorted in the order frequently mentioned on tweets. Of 143 adverse events mentioned on tweets, two were not classified as Preferred Terms because they used a broader term. The top five adverse events were nausea (n = 54, 37.76%), vomiting (n = 18, 12.59%), dyspepsia (n = 14, 9.79%), dizziness (n = 7, 4.90%), and somnolence (n = 7, 4.90%).
Table 3 . Adverse events of GLP-1 receptor agonists mentioned on Twitter.
| Preferred terms | Number of mentioning (n = 143)a | Notoriety |
|---|---|---|
| Nausea | 54 (37.76) | K/U/M |
| Vomiting | 18 (12.59) | K/U/M |
| Dyspepsia | 14 (9.79) | K/U/M |
| Dizziness | 7 (4.90) | K/U/M |
| Somnolence | 7 (4.90) | Kb/Uc |
| Injection site reaction | 5 (3.50) | K/U/M |
| Diarrhoea | 3 (2.10) | K/U/M |
| Myalgia | 2 (1.40) | Kb |
| Abdominal pain | 2 (1.40) | K/U/M |
| Insomnia | 2 (1.40) | K/U |
| Headache | 2 (1.40) | K/U/M |
| Fatigue | 2 (1.40) | K/U/M |
| Hypoglycaemia | 2 (1.40) | K/U/M |
| Flatulence | 2 (1.40) | K/U/M |
| Injection site bruising | 2 (1.40) | I |
| Injection site rash | 2 (1.40) | I |
| Chest pain | 1 (0.70) | Kb |
| Chest discomfort | 1 (0.70) | Kb |
| Urticaria | 1 (0.70) | K/U/M |
| Asthenia | 1 (0.70) | K/U/M |
| Increased appetite | 1 (0.70) | No |
| Urine abnormality | 1 (0.70) | No |
| Vision blurred | 1 (0.70) | Uc |
| Allergy | 1 (0.70) | K/U |
| Rhinitis | 1 (0.70) | No |
| Dermatitis acneiform | 1 (0.70) | No |
| Depression | 1 (0.70) | U/M |
| Parosmia | 1 (0.70) | Kb |
| Gastrooesophageal reflux disease | 1 (0.70) | K/U/M |
| Injection site pruritus | 1 (0.70) | I |
| Disturbance in attention | 1 (0.70) | No |
| Unclassifiable | 2 (1.40) | . |
I, included in injection site reaction; K, listed on the drug label (Saxenda®) in South Korea; M, listed on the Micromedex® (liraglutide and semaglutide); U, listed on the drug labels (Saxenda® and Wegovy®) in United States..
aValues are presented as n (%)..
bReported from post-marketing surveillance in South Korea..
cSuggested as signs and symptoms of hypoglycemia..
Adverse events such as somnolence, myalgia, chest pain, chest discomfort, and parosmia identified in tweets are only recorded in the Korean label. This is because they were not originally reported in clinical trials for approval, but rather reported in the post-marketing surveillance conducted in Korea over four years with 670 subjects.
Fig. 3 shows a KIDS-KD processing diagram. From August 2017 to December 2020, there were 3,281 reports for liraglutide or antiobesity drugs in KIDS-KD. A total of 1,701 liraglutide- adverse event combinations and 1,976 other antiobesity drugs-adverse event combinations were used for disproportionality analysis. Table 4 shows the characteristics of adverse event reports on liraglutide and other antiobesity drugs. Adverse events were primarily reported by women aged 35 to 55, and were reported by the patients through the pharmaceutical company.
Table 4 . Characteristics of adverse events reports on liraglutide and other antiobesity drugs.
| Characteristics | Liraglutide (n = 989) | Other antiobesity drugs (n = 1,197) |
|---|---|---|
| Age, median (IQR), years | 45 (35-55) | 42 (33-52) |
| Sex, n (%) | ||
| Men | 113 (11.4) | 140 (11.7) |
| Women | 723 (73.1) | 973 (81.3) |
| Not reported | 153 (15.5) | 84 (7.0) |
| Reporting year, n (%) | ||
| 2017 | 2 (0.2) | 157 (15.9) |
| 2018 | 199 (20.1) | 304 (30.7) |
| 2019 | 401 (40.6) | 428 (43.3) |
| 2020 | 387 (39.1) | 308 (31.1) |
| Original reporter, n (%) | ||
| Doctor | 48 (4.8) | 283 (23.6) |
| Pharmacist | 45 (4.6) | 584 (48.8) |
| Nurse | 89 (9.0) | 62 (5.2) |
| Customer | 710 (71.8) | 75 (6.3) |
| Others | 73 (7.4) | 6 (0.5) |
| Not reported | 24 (2.4) | 187 (15.6) |
| Reporter group, n (%) | ||
| Manufacturer | 834 (84.3) | 390 (32.6) |
| Regional PV center | 146 (14.8) | 790 (66.0) |
| Others | 9 (0.9) | 17 (1.4) |
| Seriousness, n (%) | ||
| Yes | 7 (0.7) | 21 (1.8) |
| No | 982 (99.3) | 1,176 (98.2) |
IQR, interquartile range; PV, pharmacovigilance..
Figure 3. KIDS-KD processing diagram.
The adverse events that account for ≥ 1% of the adverse events reported for liraglutide are shown in Table 5. Injection site rash (n = 229, 13.46%), injection site pruritus (n = 183, 10.76%), nausea (n = 181, 10.64%), vomiting (n = 109, 6.41%), and injection site reaction (n = 90, 5.29%) were the most commonly reported adverse events of liraglutide.
Table 5 . Adverse events of GLP-1 receptor agonists from KIDS-KD.
| Preferred terms | Liraglutide (n = 1,701)a | Other antiobesity drugs (n = 1,976)a | ROR | PRR | ICb | Notoriety |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Injection site rash | 229 (13.46) | 0 (0)c | 533.2 | 616.1 | 0.85 | I |
| Injection site pruritus | 183 (10.76) | 0 (0)c | 426.3 | 477.7 | 0.81 | I |
| Nausea | 181 (10.64) | 133 (6.73) | 1.58 | 1.65 | 0.06 | K/U/M |
| Vomiting | 109 (6.41) | 54 (2.73) | 2.34 | 2.44 | 0.18 | K/U/M |
| Injection site reaction | 90 (5.29) | 0 (0)c | 210.2 | 222.0 | 0.68 | K/U/M |
| Diarrhoea | 65 (3.82) | 44 (2.23) | 1.72 | 1.74 | −0.07 | K/U/M |
| Dyspepsia | 58 (3.41) | 59 (2.99) | 1.14 | 1.15 | −0.35 | K/U/M |
| Headache | 56 (3.29) | 204 (10.32) | 0.32 | 0.30 | −1.51 | K/U/M |
| Pruritus | 47 (2.76) | 22 (1.11) | 2.48 | 2.52 | 0.02 | Kd/U/M |
| Abdominal pain | 47 (2.76) | 39 (1.97) | 1.40 | 1.41 | −0.27 | K/U/M |
| Dizziness | 44 (2.59) | 155 (7.84) | 0.33 | 0.31 | −1.52 | K/U/M |
| Constipation | 36 (2.12) | 70 (3.54) | 0.60 | 0.59 | −0.98 | K/U/M |
| Rash | 35 (2.06) | 14 (0.71) | 2.90 | 2.94 | −0.001 | Kd/U/M |
| Urticaria | 35 (2.06) | 21 (1.06) | 1.94 | 1.96 | −0.17 | K/U/M |
| Fatigue | 22 (1.29) | 11 (0.56) | 2.32 | 2.34 | −0.25 | K/U/M |
| Injection site bruising | 19 (1.12) | 0 (0)c | 45.3 | 45.8 | 0.16 | I |
| Insomnia | 17 (1.00) | 303 (15.33) | 0.07 | 0.06 | −3.77 | K/U |
| Others (< 1% frequency) | 428 (25.16) | 847 (42.86) | . | . | . | . |
I, included in injection site reaction; IC, information component; K, listed on the drug label (Saxenda®) in South Korea; M, listed on the Micromedex® (liraglutide and semaglutide); PRR, proportional reporting ratio; ROR, reporting odds ratio; U, listed on the drug labels (Saxenda® and Wegovy®) in United States..
aValues are presented as n (%)..
bUnder limit of 95% confidence interval..
cAdding 0.5 to all cells before disproportionality analysis..
dReported from post-marketing surveillance in South Korea..
Seven signals that met three criteria were detected from KIDS-KD: injection site rash (ROR = 616.1), injection site pruritus (ROR = 477.7), vomiting (ROR = 2.4), injection site reaction (ROR = 222.0), pruritus (ROR = 2.5), injection site bruising (ROR = 45.8), injection site pain (ROR = 36.3). All signals were listed on drug labels in South Korea, United states, and Micromedex®.
Subgroup analysis revealed that injection site rash (n = 16, ROR = 46.6) and acne (n = 3, ROR = 39.2) met signal criteria in men and women, respectively. Acne is not currently included in either drug label or Micromedex®.
This study investigated adverse events of GLP-1 receptor agonists used for weight loss. On Twitter, nausea, vomiting, and dyspepsia were reported most frequently. Gastrointestinal adverse events were also common in clinical trials. In a 20-week trial including 564 obese adults, nausea and vomiting occurred in 34.8% and 9.7% of liraglutide group, respectively (Astrup et al. 2009). In a 56-week trial involving 3,731 adults with overweight or obesity, the most common adverse events in the liraglutide group were nausea (40.2%), diarrhea (20.9%), constipation (20.0%), and vomiting (16.3%) (Pi-Sunyer et al. 2015). Similarly, in a study for adolescents with obesity, the most common adverse events of liraglutide were nausea (42.4%) and vomiting (34.4%) (Kelly et al. 2020). Social media has a lower threshold for the general public to report adverse events than spontaneous reporting systems. Therefore, adverse events that do not require professional expertise, especially gastrointestinal adverse events, are likely to be easily reported.
From Twitter, adverse events such as somnolence, myalgia, chest pain, chest discomfort, and parosmia were also detected. These adverse events were not reported in clinical trials for approval (Pi-Sunyer et al. 2015), but were observed in four year of post-marketing surveillance (Ministry of Food and Drug Safety 2022). In particular, parosmia is a rare adverse event that only 30 cases of liraglutide have been reported in the international pharmacovigilance database of the World Health Organization (Merino et al. 2022). The adverse events observed in post-marketing surveillance were identified on Twitter, indicating the usefulness of pharmacovigilance using Twitter.
Pharmacovigilance using tweets has some disadvantages. First, tweets are less reliable because they are written by users without medical staff intervention. For this reason, an adverse event that have mentioned only once in a tweet and have never been reported by other sources may have been caused by other causes or falsely written. For this reason, it is not certain that adverse events such as increased appetite, urine abnormality, disturbance in attention, and rhinitis are adverse events caused by GLP-1 receptor agonists. Second, the number of Korean tweets referring to adverse events is still small. Nevertheless, the number of tweets mentioning Saxenda® increased in 2022 and Wegovy® is expected to be introduced in South Korea, thus more adverse event tweets are expected to be available in the future.
From KIDS-KD, the most frequently reported adverse events were injection site rash and pruritus. These adverse events have been reported more frequently than nausea and vomiting. These results are different from those of clinical trials. The adverse events derived as safety signals of GLP-1 receptor agonists were already known and could not present a new insight. Nevertheless, KIDS-KD has some advantages over pharmacovigilance using Twitter. Causal relationships are classified into ‘certain’, ‘probable’, ‘possible’, ‘unlikely’, ‘unclassified’, ‘assessable’, and ‘not applicable’ by experts. Therefore, adverse events that can be causally related to drugs can be identified (Yi et al. 2019). In addition, statistical criteria for deriving safety signals such as ROR, PRR, and IC have been established.
Acne or dermatitis acneiform was found on Twitter and derived as signal in the subgroup analysis of KIDS-KD. GLP-1 receptor agonists enhance insulin secretion (Nuffer and Trujillo 2015). Increased insulin levels increase insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1) levels (Baldwin and Tan 2021). IGF-1 directly or by lowering forkhead box class O transcription factor 1 (FoxO1) level, increases sebum production and induces hyperplasia of keratinocytes (Baldwin and Tan 2021). Excess sebum production and hyperkeratinization develop acne (Baldwin and Tan 2021). However, due to the small number of cases, further research on causality and mechanisms is needed.
This study has several limitations. First, data was limited to Korean tweets and KIDS-KD. People in South Korea post tweets less than in other countries and the number of KIDS-KD data is also significantly smaller than that of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS). Second, not all people who have experienced adverse events report through Twitter or spontaneous reporting systems. Adverse events are likely to be underreported, and the total number of patients administered the drug is unknown. Therefore, it is impossible to identify the incidences of adverse events. Third, Twitter, and some KIDS-KD data, are missing detailed information on demographic (i.e., age, sex), drug use (i.e., dose, number of administrations), and adverse events (i.e., date of occurrence, seriousness). Last, in the disproportionality analysis, other antiobesity drugs (ATC A08 drugs) were used instead of all other drugs. Thus, some signals might not be detected. In addition, since the compared drugs were orally administered, there were no reported cases of adverse events at the injection site, which led to abnormally high ROR values for adverse events at the injection site.
In this study, adverse events of GLP-1 receptor agonists used for weight loss were investigated using real-world data. Twitter analysis identified adverse events that were not found in clinical trials, and KIDS-KD subgroup analysis suggested the possibility of acne being a safety signal. Social media or spontaneous reporting system are meaningful as real-world data for pharmacovigilance. Further research using larger data is needed to confirm our results.
The authors greatly appreciate the Korea Institute of Drug Safety & Risk Management (Ministry of Food and Drug Safety) for providing the KIDS-KAERS database (KIDS-KD) for this study.
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Table 1 2 × 2 table for disproportionality analysis
| Specific adverse event | Other adverse events | |
|---|---|---|
| Liraglutide | A | B |
| Other antiobesity drugs | C | D |
Table 2 Definition and criteria of signal detection for each indicator
| Definition | Criteria of signal detection | |
|---|---|---|
| PRR | (A/(A+B))/ (C/(C+D)) | PRR ≥ 2, chi-squared ≥ 4, and A ≥ 3 |
| ROR | (A/B)/ (C/D) | ROR ≥ 2, chi-squared ≥ 4, and A ≥ 3 |
| IC | Log2 (P(AE, drug)/ P(AE) × P(drug)) | Under limit of 95% confidence interval ≥ 0 |
IC, information component; PRR, proportional reporting ratio; ROR, reporting odds ratio.
Table 3 Adverse events of GLP-1 receptor agonists mentioned on Twitter
| Preferred terms | Number of mentioning (n = 143)a | Notoriety |
|---|---|---|
| Nausea | 54 (37.76) | K/U/M |
| Vomiting | 18 (12.59) | K/U/M |
| Dyspepsia | 14 (9.79) | K/U/M |
| Dizziness | 7 (4.90) | K/U/M |
| Somnolence | 7 (4.90) | Kb/Uc |
| Injection site reaction | 5 (3.50) | K/U/M |
| Diarrhoea | 3 (2.10) | K/U/M |
| Myalgia | 2 (1.40) | Kb |
| Abdominal pain | 2 (1.40) | K/U/M |
| Insomnia | 2 (1.40) | K/U |
| Headache | 2 (1.40) | K/U/M |
| Fatigue | 2 (1.40) | K/U/M |
| Hypoglycaemia | 2 (1.40) | K/U/M |
| Flatulence | 2 (1.40) | K/U/M |
| Injection site bruising | 2 (1.40) | I |
| Injection site rash | 2 (1.40) | I |
| Chest pain | 1 (0.70) | Kb |
| Chest discomfort | 1 (0.70) | Kb |
| Urticaria | 1 (0.70) | K/U/M |
| Asthenia | 1 (0.70) | K/U/M |
| Increased appetite | 1 (0.70) | No |
| Urine abnormality | 1 (0.70) | No |
| Vision blurred | 1 (0.70) | Uc |
| Allergy | 1 (0.70) | K/U |
| Rhinitis | 1 (0.70) | No |
| Dermatitis acneiform | 1 (0.70) | No |
| Depression | 1 (0.70) | U/M |
| Parosmia | 1 (0.70) | Kb |
| Gastrooesophageal reflux disease | 1 (0.70) | K/U/M |
| Injection site pruritus | 1 (0.70) | I |
| Disturbance in attention | 1 (0.70) | No |
| Unclassifiable | 2 (1.40) | . |
I, included in injection site reaction; K, listed on the drug label (Saxenda®) in South Korea; M, listed on the Micromedex® (liraglutide and semaglutide); U, listed on the drug labels (Saxenda® and Wegovy®) in United States.
aValues are presented as n (%).
bReported from post-marketing surveillance in South Korea.
cSuggested as signs and symptoms of hypoglycemia.
Table 4 Characteristics of adverse events reports on liraglutide and other antiobesity drugs
| Characteristics | Liraglutide (n = 989) | Other antiobesity drugs (n = 1,197) |
|---|---|---|
| Age, median (IQR), years | 45 (35-55) | 42 (33-52) |
| Sex, n (%) | ||
| Men | 113 (11.4) | 140 (11.7) |
| Women | 723 (73.1) | 973 (81.3) |
| Not reported | 153 (15.5) | 84 (7.0) |
| Reporting year, n (%) | ||
| 2017 | 2 (0.2) | 157 (15.9) |
| 2018 | 199 (20.1) | 304 (30.7) |
| 2019 | 401 (40.6) | 428 (43.3) |
| 2020 | 387 (39.1) | 308 (31.1) |
| Original reporter, n (%) | ||
| Doctor | 48 (4.8) | 283 (23.6) |
| Pharmacist | 45 (4.6) | 584 (48.8) |
| Nurse | 89 (9.0) | 62 (5.2) |
| Customer | 710 (71.8) | 75 (6.3) |
| Others | 73 (7.4) | 6 (0.5) |
| Not reported | 24 (2.4) | 187 (15.6) |
| Reporter group, n (%) | ||
| Manufacturer | 834 (84.3) | 390 (32.6) |
| Regional PV center | 146 (14.8) | 790 (66.0) |
| Others | 9 (0.9) | 17 (1.4) |
| Seriousness, n (%) | ||
| Yes | 7 (0.7) | 21 (1.8) |
| No | 982 (99.3) | 1,176 (98.2) |
IQR, interquartile range; PV, pharmacovigilance.
Table 5 Adverse events of GLP-1 receptor agonists from KIDS-KD
| Preferred terms | Liraglutide (n = 1,701)a | Other antiobesity drugs (n = 1,976)a | ROR | PRR | ICb | Notoriety |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Injection site rash | 229 (13.46) | 0 (0)c | 533.2 | 616.1 | 0.85 | I |
| Injection site pruritus | 183 (10.76) | 0 (0)c | 426.3 | 477.7 | 0.81 | I |
| Nausea | 181 (10.64) | 133 (6.73) | 1.58 | 1.65 | 0.06 | K/U/M |
| Vomiting | 109 (6.41) | 54 (2.73) | 2.34 | 2.44 | 0.18 | K/U/M |
| Injection site reaction | 90 (5.29) | 0 (0)c | 210.2 | 222.0 | 0.68 | K/U/M |
| Diarrhoea | 65 (3.82) | 44 (2.23) | 1.72 | 1.74 | −0.07 | K/U/M |
| Dyspepsia | 58 (3.41) | 59 (2.99) | 1.14 | 1.15 | −0.35 | K/U/M |
| Headache | 56 (3.29) | 204 (10.32) | 0.32 | 0.30 | −1.51 | K/U/M |
| Pruritus | 47 (2.76) | 22 (1.11) | 2.48 | 2.52 | 0.02 | Kd/U/M |
| Abdominal pain | 47 (2.76) | 39 (1.97) | 1.40 | 1.41 | −0.27 | K/U/M |
| Dizziness | 44 (2.59) | 155 (7.84) | 0.33 | 0.31 | −1.52 | K/U/M |
| Constipation | 36 (2.12) | 70 (3.54) | 0.60 | 0.59 | −0.98 | K/U/M |
| Rash | 35 (2.06) | 14 (0.71) | 2.90 | 2.94 | −0.001 | Kd/U/M |
| Urticaria | 35 (2.06) | 21 (1.06) | 1.94 | 1.96 | −0.17 | K/U/M |
| Fatigue | 22 (1.29) | 11 (0.56) | 2.32 | 2.34 | −0.25 | K/U/M |
| Injection site bruising | 19 (1.12) | 0 (0)c | 45.3 | 45.8 | 0.16 | I |
| Insomnia | 17 (1.00) | 303 (15.33) | 0.07 | 0.06 | −3.77 | K/U |
| Others (< 1% frequency) | 428 (25.16) | 847 (42.86) | . | . | . | . |
I, included in injection site reaction; IC, information component; K, listed on the drug label (Saxenda®) in South Korea; M, listed on the Micromedex® (liraglutide and semaglutide); PRR, proportional reporting ratio; ROR, reporting odds ratio; U, listed on the drug labels (Saxenda® and Wegovy®) in United States.
aValues are presented as n (%).
bUnder limit of 95% confidence interval.
cAdding 0.5 to all cells before disproportionality analysis.
dReported from post-marketing surveillance in South Korea.
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