EXCLUSIVE GPs send urgent sex warning to NHS patients on skinny jabs - after health chiefs' 'surprise pregnancy' alert

Daily Mail​

2 days ago

Thousands of people in Scotland are being sent urgent text alerts from NHS GPs, warning them to use condoms during sex when first starting to use weight loss jabs.
The move follows last night's warning from UK health watchdog, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), that blockbuster injections like Ozempic and Wegovy could make contraceptive less effective and be harmful to unborn babies.
Those using the 'King-Kong' of weight loss jabs, Mounjaro, were told to 'double-up' their methods of contraception if using the Pill.
Doctors at Lincluden Medical Centre in Uddingston, Lanarkshire, which has around 9000 patients, yesterday sent out text alerts encouraging the use of condoms while using the jabs.
The text read: 'These injections can make the contraceptive pill and HRT less effective.
'If you take the pill with these injections you need to use condoms for four weeks after starting the first injection and for four weeks after any dose increase.
'If a private clinic is prescribing your weight loss injections make sure you tell them about all the medications you are taking.'
The practice added that it had noticed a spike in patients sourcing jabs like Mounjaro from private clinics.
Experts say strong evidence that weight loss injections can make contraception redundant is yet to be found, but leaflets that come with the drugs already tell patients to use contraception, and to stop taking the drugs if they get pregnant.
Meanwhile, some women have reported becoming pregnant while using the jabs to lose weight despite using hormonal contraception.
One woman, who posted on a Reddit forum, revealed she had become pregnant while using Mounjaro, despite taking contraception.
She shared an image of her positive pregnancy test and wrote that weight loss jabs 'make it hard for oral medications (like the Pill) to be effective'.
Professor Sir Stephen O'Rahilly, co-director of the Wellcome-MRC Institute of Metabolic Science, told The Guardian the reduced efficacy of contraception could be explained by nausea and diarrhoea some people who use the jabs experience.
He said: 'People treated with these drugs can develop gastrointestinal side-effects including diarrhoea, so it is not implausible that some women may find that their oral contraceptive pill is, at least intermittently, not as reliably absorbed as it was previously.'
He suggested that women keen to avoid pregnancy who are using skinny jabs while on the Pill use additional methods of contraception like condoms 'until their weight stabilises'.
The MHRA warning also stated that 'there is not enough safety data to know whether taking the medicine could cause harm to the baby.'
Officials added that women who become pregnant while using the medications must cease taking them immediately.
The regulator added that, to date, it had received more than 40 reports relating to pregnancy—including birth defects, miscarriages and unplanned pregnancies— among women on the drugs.
Weight-loss injections belong to class of drugs known as GLP- agonists, which help encourage fullness by mimicking a natural hormone released after eating.
Some, like Mounjaro, also act on a second hormone involved in appetite and blood sugar control.