Free Republic

Edward Gillen, 59, woke up one May morning last year and noticed a speck in his eye. The Massachusetts dad of four and beloved softball coach was just about the retire. Meanwhile, his sight was getting worse by the day. He desperately tried to nail down the cause quickly, but his vision loss deteriorated even faster. “It was Memorial Day weekend, and by June 1st, I was blind,” Gillen told the The U.S. Sun. After undergoing MRIs, CT scans and an exam from a neuro-opthalmologist, he got an answer. Doctors told him his vision loss was nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic...

A rare form of sudden and potentially permanent vision loss is becoming the latest safety question surrounding blockbuster GLP-1 drugs, with patients filing lawsuits in the U.S. even as regulators overseas have already added warnings. The condition is called nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy, or NAION. It occurs when blood flow to the optic nerve is reduced, potentially causing abrupt vision loss that can be permanent.The complication appears to be extremely rare. The bigger issue is that researchers still disagree over whether drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy actually cause it.That uncertainty is now moving from medical journals into courtrooms...

Two independent studies show that patients with type 2 diabetes who are treated with the drug Ozempic have an increased risk of developing damage to the optic nerve of the eye, which can lead to severe and permanent loss of vision. Both of the new register-based studies from SDU confirm a concern that was raised earlier this year in a smaller American study. "We have examined data from all 424,152 Danes with type 2 diabetes. We found that Ozempic more than doubles the risk of developing NAION. NAION is damage to the optic nerve of the eye caused by a...

The Food and Drug Administration said today that it had asked Pfizer Inc., the world's largest drug maker, to amend its warnings on Viagra in response to scattered reports of vision loss by people taking the drug. Some blindness was reported by 38 men taking Viagra - a tiny fraction of the 23 million people who have used the drug - and among four men taking Cialis, a newer competitor. None of the 100 or so clinical trials on Viagra have suggested that the drug causes vision loss, but the F.D.A. said it had suggested updating the drug's warning label...