Life is full of trade-offs. Take Ozempic to lose weight and, with enough time, you might finally look like the version of yourself you’ve been chasing. But the monkey’s paw curls. According to a new study published in The BMJ, some people taking GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, and Zepbound may end up shedding more than pounds. They might also start shedding hair.
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania analyzed health records from roughly 12,004 adults with Type 2 diabetes who started taking GLP-1 medications between 2019 and 2024, comparing them with tens of thousands of other patients using two other diabetes drugs, SGLT-2 inhibitors and DPP-4 inhibitors. After adjusting for differences like age, weight, and health conditions, GLP-1 users were 37 percent more likely to develop alopecia than people taking SGLT-2 inhibitors and 68 percent more likely than those on DPP-4 inhibitors.
Before you start planning your trip to Turkey to fill the follicles being emptied by your GLP-1 meds, know that the overall risk remains tiny. Only about 200 of the 12,004 GLP-1 users developed alopecia. That’s about 1.6 percent. Most of the cases involved nonscarring hair loss, meaning the follicles stayed alive and the hair could potentially grow back.
A New Study Links GLP-1 Drugs to Hair Loss, but the Risk Is Still Low
There’s also a chance, according to the researchers, that the drugs themselves might not even be the cause. They suspect that the real villain here could be the rapid weight loss itself, which has been known to shock the body into temporarily dumping hair. Add in possible iron or zinc deficiencies from eating less, along with the hormonal changes that come with sudden dramatic weight loss, and it could all add up to your hair deciding to jump ship along with your fat.
Another important point here is that the study doesn’t prove GLP-1 drugs directly cause hair loss, only that the two seem linked. There’s a lot more research needed to figure out why it happens, who is most at risk, and whether stopping the medication reverses the hair loss.
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