Lawsuit alleges Maryland man with diabetes became blind after taking Ozempic – NBC News
2025-04-26T00:18:00Z
A man who took Ozempic and then became legally blind is suing the manufacturer, arguing it should have warned patients that loss of sight could be a side effect.
A Maryland man who took Ozempic and then became legally blind is suing the drug’s manufacturer, arguing it had an obligation to warn patients that loss of sight could be a possible side effect.
Todd Engel, 62, was prescribed Ozempic in 2023 to manage his Type 2 diabetes. The lawsuit said about four months later, Engel was diagnosed with nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy, or NAION, a condition in which a loss of blood flow to the optic nerve causes sudden and irreversible vision loss.
NAION occurs in up to about 10 out of every 100,000 people over age 50, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology.
Ozempic and others in the same class of drugs, called GLP-1s, were designed for Type 2 diabetes and have become wildly popular for weight loss in recent years.
Some studies have indicated that patients prescribed semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic, for diabetes or weight loss may be at increased risk of developing NAION. Experts say while evidence is growing that there is an association between Ozempic and NAION, it’s still too early to know definitively if semaglutide raises the risk of developing the condition — especially because diabetes itself is a risk factor for NAION and other eye issues.
The lawsuit, filed late Thursday in the Superior Court of New Jersey, Middlesex County, accuses Novo Nordisk of negligence and said it had a duty to provide patients and physicians with information about the risk of serious eye problems. It said Novo Nordisk had access to information dating back as early as its Ozempic clinical trials that identified cases of NAION yet chose not to list the condition on its warning label.
“Nothing was or is stopping Defendant from adding a warning regarding the risk of NAION,” the lawsuit said.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Novo Nordisk said NAION is not an adverse drug reaction to Ozempic and other GLP-1s. Novo Nordisk said its benefit-risk profile of semaglutide “remains unchanged” after a thorough evaluation of studies from the University of Southern Denmark and an internal safety assessment, which didn’t suggest a causal relationship between GLP-1 use and NAION.
The company added that it takes reports of adverse events seriously.
“This also relates to eye conditions, which are well-known comorbidities for people living with diabetes. Any decision to start treatment with prescription-only medicines should be made in consultation with a healthcare professional who should do a benefit-risk evaluation for the patient in question, weighing up the benefits of treatment with the potential risks,” the spokesperson said.
Jonathan Orent, an attorney for Engel who works for plaintiff litigation firm Motley Rice, said Engel first experienced loss of vision in one eye before eventually becoming legally blind in both. The eye problems forced him to resign from his job as a motor equipment operator for his county’s public works department, made it impossible for him to drive and have forever changed how he interacts with family and friends.
Todd Engel and his wife, Shelley. Courtesy Todd Engel
“He made a comment to me about how it’s painful to know he’s never going to see his wife smile again, but he knows her voice so well, he can tell when she is smiling,” Orent said.
He said if Engel had known Ozempic had a possible link to blindness, he would have considered other treatment options.
“There are a wide number of medications that can be used to treat diabetes, and treat it effectively,” Orent said.
The lawsuit is not the first of its kind. Another law firm recently filed a similar suit against Novo Nordisk.
The litigation comes amid ongoing questions over the link between the drug and NAION. A 2024 study found that people with diabetes who take semaglutide are over four times more likely to be diagnosed with NAION than people with diabetes who had not been prescribed it. Those who were overweight or obese and did not have diabetes were over seven times more likely to be diagnosed with NAION than those who had not been prescribed it, the study found. But the researchers cautioned that more studies are needed to determine whether there is a causal link between the irreversible vision problems and the drugs, especially because it was a study based on an analysis of six years’ worth of medical records from patients in the Boston area, not a randomized clinical trial.
In February, a JAMA Ophthalmology study suggested a more modest increase in the risk of NAION among people with Type 2 diabetes who take Ozempic, and also suggested further investigation was necessary.
The Food and Drug Administration declined to respond to questions about reports of a possible association between Ozempic and NAION, saying it does not comment on pending litigation. On the FDA’s Adverse Events Reporting System, a public dashboard, there are hundreds of reports from 2024 of eye disorders tied to Ozempic, though the FDA warns the dashboard data may contain duplicates and the data has not been independently verified.
Dr. Andrew Lee, a spokesperson for the American Academy of Ophthalmology and a neuro-ophthalmologist at Houston Methodist Hospital, said he is eager for more research to come out on semaglutide, particularly on whether it raises the risk for life-altering eye diseases such as NAION.
“It’s a super important question to be able to answer whether Ozempic or any semaglutide causes NAION,” he said. “There’s just so many people on this drug.”
But patients who are concerned should not rush off the drug without speaking to their doctors, he said.
“How many people would you harm if they weren’t on it because they got a stroke or a heart attack or got some other problem?” he said.
Engel’s lawsuit seeks damages and a jury trial.
“Hopefully his story will show that there’s another side to this drug that has bought the reputation as being a miracle drug,” Orent said.
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