On this photograph representation, packing containers of the diabetes drug Ozempic leisure on a pharmacy counter on April 17, 2023 in Los Angeles, California.
Mario Tama | Getty Photographs
Novo Nordisk on Tuesday sued 5 scientific spas and wellness clinics for allegedly promoting inexpensive, unauthorized variations of the corporate’s weight reduction medication Ozempic and Wegovy.
The Danish drugmaker initiated the court cases in federal courts in New York, Texas, Florida and Tennessee, in step with proceedings received through CNBC.
The fits accused the spas and clinics of promoting and promoting “compounded” drug merchandise that declare to include semaglutide, the energetic factor in each Ozempic and Wegovy. Compounded medication are personalized variations of a remedy that aren’t licensed through the Meals and Drug Management.
Novo Nordisk is the only real patent holder of semaglutide and does now not promote that factor to out of doors entities. It is unclear what the spas and clinics are in truth promoting to shoppers.
Novo Nordisk requested the courts for orders blockading the gross sales of the unauthorized medication and an unspecified amount of cash damages.
“Those illegal advertising and gross sales practices, together with using Novo Nordisk emblems in reference to those practices, have created a prime chance of client confusion and deception in addition to doable protection considerations,” the corporate wrote in a press free up Tuesday.
The spas and clinics named within the court cases come with Professional Well being Investments, Champion Well being & Wellness Clinics and Flawless Symbol Clinical Aesthetics.
It additionally comprises Effinger Well being, which operates as Nuvida Rx Weight Loss, and Ekzotika Corp., which is doing trade as Beauty Laser Execs Med Spa. The latter sanatorium gives a $30 Groupon for a one-week “semaglutide weight control program.”
The spas and clinics did not straight away reply to CNBC’s requests for remark.
The fits come amid a scarcity of Wegovy and Ozempic, which has resulted in a growth in compounded choices that declare to be the preferred injections.
The FDA final month warned concerning the protection dangers of unauthorized variations of Ozempic and Wegovy after studies emerged of difficult well being reactions to compounded variations of the medication.
A number of states have additionally threatened to take criminal motion in opposition to compounding pharmacies that make or distribute unapproved diversifications of Novo Nordisk’s weight reduction therapies.
