Produced by the Danish company Novo Nordisk, Ozempic is an injectable drug that regulates blood sugar levels and insulin.
But the drug’s active ingredient, semaglutide, also mimics a hormone called glucagon-like peptide-1 that targets areas of the brain that regulate appetite and food.
On Wednesday, the regulator said recent estimates suggested that over the course of a year, some 2,185 patients in France were given Ozempic even as they were not diabetic.
Authorities in the UK and Australia have also issued warnings to influencers promoting these drugs online.
“It can be mild digestive side effects, sometimes severe constipation and inflammation of the pancreas.
The instructions for Ozempic published by the European Medicines Agency state that nausea, diarrhoea and hypoglycaemia are “very common” side effects.
Regarding Ozempic, the US National Library of Medicine warns that the injectable drug “may increase the risk that you will develop tumours of the thyroid gland, including medullary thyroid carcinoma which is a type of thyroid cancer.
In 2021, a BBC documentary warned about the dangerous use of the medicated syrup apetamin by female influencers, this time to gain weight quickly and achieve an extreme hourglass figure.
A number of beauty “tricks” involving unlicensed drugs or off-label uses have come under fire in recent years.