GLP-1 drugs will now have warning label about potential increased risk of blindness

The Food and Drug Administration made a big move concerning GLP-1 weight loss drugs.

The U.S. health regulators will now require the drug makers to add a new warning about the potential increase risk of blindness.

Channel 2’s Sophia Choi started looking into the potential side effect earlier this year after Channel 2 investigates heard from a Georgia nurse who ended up legally blind.

“My vision’s just not as what it was,” Diane Wirth said.

Wirth lives in Hartwell. She tries to do her chores with blurry vision.

“It’s a lot more difficult,” she said.

The now former Grady nurse practitioner woke up one Saturday - just weeks after starting Wegovy in Feb. 2025 - and could not see out of her right eye.

“It was heartbreaking, it was jarring, I was angry,” she said.

Wirth said no one told her about any increase risk of blindness and it wasn’t listed as a side effect.

But with a move made Monday, the FDA says it will require it.

“It’s very interesting because it affects all GLP-1 drugs. It’s Ozempic, it’s Wegovy, it’s Mounjaro, it’s Zepbound,” attorney Jason Goldstein says.

RELATED STORIES

• Woman who lost eyesight after starting GLP-1s wants warning added to labels
• Father of 4 says GLP-1 shots left him blind
• GLP-1 drugmakers hit with lawsuits over claims of sudden vision loss

Goldstein is on the steering committee for dozens of cases like Diane’s. They’re all part of a multi-district lawsuit going before a Philadelphia judge.

All of them got nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy, or NAION, a painless eye stroke that’s irreversible.

“Once it happens, it’s permanent. There’s no going back. So it’s scary,” Wirth said.

Novo Nordisk and Lilly are the two big makers of GLP-1s. Both companies say patient safety is their top priority and that “the evidence does not establish a causal relationship between GLP-1RAs and NAION.”

Novo Nordisk says it conducted its own study of 96,000 patients and found no increased risk. The FDA did its own study before making the decision that requires the makers to list blindness as possible increased risk.

“And based on that they had made the determination to do a class wide warning,” Goldstein said.

It could take some time before users see the warning inside the GLP-1 boxes. The companies typically get 30 days to respond with either their compliance or rebuttal.

[SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]