Sweden Reports Rise in Semaglutide Adverse Reactions

Sweden has logged a sharp rise in semaglutide adverse reactions reported to its pharmaceutical injury insurance. The scheme received 33 claims linked to semaglutide products, including Ozempic, Wegovy and Rybelsus, in the first eight months of 2026, against 13 in the whole of 2025, chief executive Anders Hultman told Euractiv. Since 2020 the insurer has received 92 such claims, 47 of them involving eye symptoms.

Why semaglutide adverse reactions are climbing

Prescribing has grown faster than the claims. Socialstyrelsen data provided to Euractiv show 260,677 unique people collected a semaglutide prescription in 2025, and 286,054 did so in January to August 2026 alone. Awareness has climbed too. The EMA’s June 2025 label change, four payouts in Denmark, and Swedish press coverage in late 2025 and January 2026 all make patients and clinicians more likely to file.

Eye claims and how the insurer decides them

Of the 47 eye-related claimants, one has been paid for non-arteritic anterior ischaemic optic neuropathy (NAION), 29 have been refused, and 16 remain under review. Claim descriptions range from “blind in one eye” to needing stronger glasses. Because most people who file do not use the term NAION, the insurer stresses the 47 cannot be read as 47 confirmed cases.

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The NAION question in brief

Eye risk on the label was long limited to worsening of existing diabetic retinopathy, known from SUSTAIN-6. In July 2024, Hathaway and colleagues reported a higher NAION risk in a Massachusetts Eye and Ear cohort, a hazard ratio of 4.28 in type 2 diabetes and 7.64 in overweight or obesity, though event counts were small and the setting was a referral clinic. On 6 June 2025 the EMA’s PRAC concluded NAION is a very rare side effect, affecting up to 1 in 10,000 people, with about a two-fold relative risk in adults with type 2 diabetes. Läkemedelsverket relayed that position on 9 June 2025 and the MHRA in February 2026. A February 2026 study of US veterans by Heberer and colleagues put the hazard ratio at 2.33, with incidence of 123 versus 67 per 100,000 person-years.

What the rise does not show

Novo Nordisk maintains that pooled randomised trials spanning about 83,000 patient-years on semaglutide show few ophthalmologist-confirmed NAION cases, similar to placebo. Tirzepatide, a related GLP-1 medicine, has seen its own claims rise to 11, two of them eye-related, while dispensing climbed from 95,140 people in 2025 to 154,504 in the first eight months of 2026. Läkemedelsverket’s separate spontaneous-reporting system logged 476 semaglutide reports in 2025, up 159 year-on-year, and the agency tied the increase to higher prescribing rather than a newly discovered common harm.

Source: Euractiv (Monica Kleja) and Läkemedelsförsäkringen