FDA warns Empower Pharmacy over compounded semaglutide and tirzepatide

FDA warns Empower Pharmacy over compounded semaglutide and tirzepatide

On September 18, 2026, the FDA issued a warning letter to Empower Clinic Services, LLC, doing business as Empower Pharmacy, of Houston, Texas, following an inspection of its facility in November 2025. The agency said the pharmacy compounded tirzepatide/niacinamide and semaglutide/cyanocobalamin products that appear to be essentially copies of FDA-approved drugs — the legal line … Read more

Semaglutide’s heart benefit held across frailty levels in 17,604 SELECT patients

Semaglutide's benefit held across frailty levels

One of the open questions about GLP-1 drugs is whether they are a good idea in people who are already frail — older, carrying several conditions, less able to absorb a period of appetite loss. A new analysis of the SELECT trial, published in JAMA Cardiology on 16 September 2026, sorted all 17,604 participants by … Read more

Orforglipron beat oral semaglutide on blood sugar and weight over 52 weeks

Orforglipron beat oral semaglutide over 52 weeks

Eli Lilly posted the full results of ACHIEVE-3 to ClinicalTrials.gov on 15 September 2026, and they are the first detailed head-to-head numbers between the two oral GLP-1 drugs. Over 52 weeks in 1,698 adults with type 2 diabetes, the higher dose of orforglipron lowered blood sugar further than the higher dose of oral semaglutide and … Read more

Teens on GLP-1 drugs had fewer recorded suicide-related events in an 18,444-patient study

Teens on GLP-1 drugs had fewer recorded suicide-related events in an 18,444-patient study

Adolescents with obesity who started semaglutide, liraglutide or tirzepatide were less likely to have a recorded suicide-related event over up to three years than matched adolescents managed with lifestyle intervention, according to an electronic health records study published on 14 September in Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism. It points away from psychiatric harm in the age … Read more

A European obesity society says the drugs have outrun the care around them

A European obesity society says the drugs have outrun the care around them

The European Association for the Study of Obesity has published a position statement whose argument is not about whether incretin drugs work. It treats that as settled. The argument is that everything around the prescription has failed to keep pace: patient selection, monitoring, clinician training and access have all moved more slowly than the drugs, … Read more

225 self-harm reports across three GLP-1 drugs, and what the comparison can and cannot show

225 self-harm reports across three GLP-1 drugs, and what the comparison can and cannot show

Between January 2021 and December 2025, Europe’s pharmacovigilance database logged 42,941 adverse-event reports naming liraglutide, semaglutide or tirzepatide as a suspect drug in diabetes or weight management. Of those, 225 involved suicide or self-injury: 141 for semaglutide, 47 for tirzepatide, 37 for liraglutide. A new analysis sets the three against each other and finds such … Read more

Why GLP-1 weight loss varies so much: 32 trials, 40,408 people

Why GLP-1 weight loss varies so much: 32 trials, 40,408 people

A meta-analysis of 32 randomised trials covering 40,408 people puts the average weight loss on GLP-1 and dual-agonist drugs at 9.36%. Most of the paper is about why that average hides so much. Trials enrolling people who also had type 2 diabetes, obstructive sleep apnoea or fatty liver disease reported systematically smaller losses. Trials that … Read more