Penn researchers use AI to flag underreported side effects discussed by GLP‑1 drug users

PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) -- A new study from the University of Pennsylvania suggests that artificial intelligence may help identify potential side effects of popular GLP1 weight-loss drugs that are being discussed online but may not appear in clinical trial data.

Researchers analyzed 400,000 Reddit posts referencing Wegovy or Ozempic dating back to 2019. From those posts, the team identified about 70,000 users who said they were taking the medications. Nearly half - 44% - reported experiencing at least one side effect.

Menstrual irregularities and issues with body temperature regulation, including chills and hot flashes, were among the symptoms that stood out in the analysis.

Neil Sehgal, a PhD student at Penn Engineering, said the platform offered a large but imperfect window into patient experiences. "Reddit is not a representative sample of the United States population," he said. "And so I'm not saying Reddit solves all these issues, but it does give us a different population that's pretty large to see what's happening."

Sehgal emphasized that the study does not claim the symptoms are caused by GLP1 drugs. Instead, he said the AI model detected patterns in how often certain experiences were mentioned by people who reported taking the medications.

"But I think the bigger opportunity is to apply the same AI-based framework to other medications that are exploding in popularity faster than our formal safety monitoring infrastructure can keep up with," he said.

According to Sehgal, the goal is to use large language models to make this type of safety research faster and easier as new drugs enter the market.