About two years ago, Henry, who is 6ft 3in, weighed 210lb, which meant he was only slightly overweight, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention body mass index. Still, the thirtysomething who lives in the Pacific north-west had hypertension, sleep apnea and body image issues, so he started taking the weight-loss drug Ozempic. While he dropped pounds, he experienced constipation, a common side-effect, so he wanted to try retatrutide, another peptide which not only targets GLP-1 but two other hormone receptors as well.
He had read about it in the news and on Reddit forums. The problem is, the US Food and Drug Administration has not approved the drug, so Henry bought it online from sellers in China. Henry, who did not want his last name used, is among a growing number of people dissatisfied with the revolutionary weight-loss drugs that can be obtained legally with a prescription and have instead turned to the gray market to purchase retatrutide, which is manufactured by the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and is being studied in clinical trials.
Physicians see the drug as a promising potential solution for people struggling with obesity, but strongly warn patients that they are seriously risking their health by using it without oversight from doctors and government regulators. Yet these warnings often go unheeded. In an 80-week clinical trial, patients with severe obesity and heart disease taking the highest weekly doses of retatrutide achieved an average weight loss of 22%, or 55lb, according to Eli Lilly.
If a patient were to ask Messer whether she recommends the drug, she would say: “Wholeheartedly – but not through the gray market. Just wait till it hits the market.” Patients, in fact, ask Messer about retatrutide about five times daily, she said. Most of them “have maxed out on Zepbound and still are not at their target weight, but it’s also people who enjoy being at the cutting edge of things”, she said.
A Reddit group dedicated to the drug gets more than 179,000 visits each week. The demand for the drug is “concerning because of the way it’s been popularized through podcasts and politicians, not through doctor-patient relationships”, said Dan Burke, a former division chief of the US Food and Drug Administration office of criminal investigations. In August, Eli Lilly announced it would provide a limited number of patients access to the drug before the FDA approves it, reported.
But Messer said that while the process is supposed to help patients “who are desperate” to try the drug, it is “just so unbelievably difficult” to qualify for special access that it could take years to obtain it, by which time the FDA will probably have already approved it. As such, patients are finding other ways to obtain the drug. The Reddit group features a “beginner’s guide” to getting it through the gray market and encourages people to “find communities (not on Reddit)”, “get tapped in” and “vet vet vet like your money depends on it”.
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