This is one label's record. The class-wide picture — how Wegovy's figures sit beside Zepbound's, and why the discontinuation rates tell a different story from the nausea rates — is on our GLP-1 side effects page. This page reads the current WEGOVY prescribing information from end to end and reports what it counts.
Which label, and why that matters. The document read here is Novo Nordisk's WEGOVY prescribing information, SPL effective 18 June 2026, retrieved from DailyMed on 23 September 2026. It covers the 2.4 mg and 7.2 mg injections and the 25 mg tablet. A search of FDA's openFDA label service for "Wegovy" returns first a repackager's copy dated April 2024, which predates the tablet, the 7.2 mg dose and the dose table below. Anyone quoting "the Wegovy label" should check which copy they opened. Several of our own earlier pages cite that older copy. The one whose conclusion it changed, our dose and side effects page, has been corrected; the rest are being re-read against the current label.
Nothing here tells anyone what to do about a symptom. Where the label instructs patients, that is reported as what the label says, and the decision sits with the prescriber.
The 2.4 mg record, with placebo subtracted
Table 3 of the label pools three placebo-controlled weight trials: 2,116 adults on Wegovy 2.4 mg for up to 68 weeks against 1,261 on placebo. The last column is our arithmetic — the Wegovy rate minus the placebo rate.
| Reaction | Placebo | Wegovy 2.4 mg | Excess |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nausea | 16% | 44% | +28 |
| Diarrhoea | 16% | 30% | +14 |
| Vomiting | 6% | 24% | +18 |
| Constipation | 11% | 24% | +13 |
| Abdominal pain | 10% | 20% | +10 |
| Headache | 10% | 14% | +4 |
| Fatigue | 5% | 11% | +6 |
| Indigestion | 3% | 9% | +6 |
| Dizziness | 4% | 8% | +4 |
| Bloating (abdominal distension) | 5% | 7% | +2 |
| Burping | <1% | 7% | +6 or more |
| Low blood sugar, type 2 diabetes only | 2% | 6% | +4 |
| Flatulence | 4% | 6% | +2 |
| Gastroenteritis | 4% | 6% | +2 |
| Reflux | 3% | 5% | +2 |
| Gastritis | 1% | 4% | +3 |
| Hair loss | 1% | 3% | +2 |
| Dysesthesia | 1% | 2% | +1 |
In total, 73% of Wegovy patients reported a gastrointestinal reaction against 47% on placebo, and 4.1% had a severe one against 0.9%. 6.8% permanently stopped because of an adverse reaction, against 3.2% — nausea 1.8% against 0.2%, vomiting 1.2% against none, diarrhoea 0.7% against 0.1%. The label says these reactions were most often reported during dose escalation.
The new table: three doses side by side
The label's Table 4 is the reason this page exists. It comes from two 72-week trials (the label's Studies 8 and 9) with three arms each: 1,311 patients on 7.2 mg, 304 on 2.4 mg and 303 on placebo. It lists reactions at least 2% more common on 7.2 mg than on both comparators.
| Reaction | Placebo | 2.4 mg | 7.2 mg | Step from 2.4 to 7.2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nausea | 13% | 35% | 39% | +4 |
| Vomiting | 6% | 16% | 22% | +6 |
| Dysesthesia | 0% | 6% | 22% | +16 |
| Constipation | 8% | 19% | 20% | +1 |
| Abdominal pain | 7% | 9% | 12% | +3 |
| Fatigue | 5% | 9% | 11% | +2 |
| Headache | 7% | 8% | 9% | +1 |
| Dizziness | 1% | 5% | 6% | +1 |
| Hair loss | 1% | 3% | 6% | +3 |
| Flatulence | 2% | 2% | 4% | +2 |
Tripling the dose barely moved the stomach. Nausea rose four points, constipation one. Discontinuation for adverse reactions was 5% on 7.2 mg and 5% on 2.4 mg, against 2% on placebo, and the gastrointestinal share of it was 3% on both.
It moved the skin. Dysesthesia nearly quadrupled, from 6% to 22%, and became — alongside vomiting — the second most common reaction at the top dose. A reader told that "higher doses mean more nausea" is being told the wrong story about this label.
The label's text puts placebo dysesthesia at 0.3%; the table rounds it to 0.
Dysesthesia, in the label's own detail
The label defines the group as altered skin sensations: allodynia (pain from a normally painless touch), burning sensation, dysesthesia, hyperesthesia, hyperpathia, skin pain, paresthesia (tingling), sensitive skin, skin burning, skin discomfort and skin sensitisation. It states that "the incidence of dysesthesia with WEGOVY increased with increasing dosage and drug levels in the blood."
What happened to the 288 people who had it on 7.2 mg:
- 2% permanently stopped, 8% paused, 23% had their dose reduced.
- Most who had any of those done recovered, and recovered faster than those for whom nothing was changed.
- 18% did not report recovering during the trial; in most of those, the dose was left unchanged.
- Of 38 who recovered and were taken back up to 7.2 mg, 17 — 45% — had it again.
On the 25 mg tablet, 5% reported dysesthesia against none on placebo. On the 2.4 mg injection in the older pooled trials, 2% against 1%.
The label does not say what causes it, and nothing in it describes it as nerve damage. What it does establish is a dose-dependent reaction that recurs on re-challenge in close to half of those tested — the pattern that separates a drug effect from background noise.
What the heart trial added
SELECT enrolled adults with established cardiovascular disease and obesity or overweight: 8,803 on Wegovy for a median of 37.3 months, 8,801 on placebo. Its safety collection was deliberately narrow — serious events, events leading to discontinuation, and events of special interest — so it cannot be read like the tables above. Within that:
- 16% stopped because of an adverse event, against 8% — more than twice the 68-week trials' rate, over a much longer period.
- Hip and pelvis fractures: 1% of women on Wegovy against 0.2% on placebo (24 of 2,448 against 5 of 2,424), and 2.4% of patients aged 75 or older against 0.6% (17 of 703 against 4 of 663). The liver-disease trial separately reported fractures of any kind in 4.4% against 3.3%. The label reports the imbalance without assigning a cause; weight loss itself changes bone, and our muscle loss page covers the body-composition record.
- Kidney stones: 1.2% against 0.8%.
- Serious low blood sugar in people without diabetes: 3 episodes against 1, and in people with previous bariatric surgery, 2 of 87 against none of 97.
Teenagers
Wegovy injection is approved from age 12 for obesity. The label's Table 5 reports a 68-week trial of 201 adolescents (mean age 15.4). Their record differs from adults' in ways worth stating:
| Reaction | Placebo (67) | Wegovy (133) |
|---|---|---|
| Nausea | 18% | 42% |
| Vomiting | 10% | 36% |
| Abdominal pain | 6% | 15% |
| Gallstones | 0% | 4% (3.8% in the text) |
| Hair loss | 0% | 4% |
| Anxiety | 2% | 4% |
| Rash | 0% | 3% |
| Hives | 0% | 3% |
Vomiting in adolescents ran at half again the adult rate. 54% had a heart-rate rise of 20 beats per minute or more at some visit, against 39% on placebo, and 3% had a liver enzyme (ALT) rise to five times the upper limit, against none. Neither the tablet nor the 7.2 mg dose is approved under 18.
Other counted reactions
From the adult weight trials unless stated, Wegovy against placebo:
- Gallbladder: gallstones 1.6% against 0.7% (tablet 2.5% against 1%); cholecystitis 0.6% against 0.2%. Gallbladder page.
- Pancreatitis: 4 adjudicated cases (0.2 per 100 patient-years) against 1. Pancreatitis page.
- Kidney injury: 0.4 against 0.2 cases per 100 patient-years, often with dehydration, and more often during dose escalation.
- Heart rate: a mean rise of 1 to 4 beats per minute; a maximum rise of 20 or more at some visit in 26% against 16%.
- Low blood pressure 1.3% against 0.4%; fainting 0.8% against 0.2%.
- Appendicitis: 0.5% against 0.2%.
- Allergic reactions in 16% of those who developed anti-semaglutide antibodies (8 of 50) against 7% of those who did not.
- Taste disturbance 1.7% against 0.5%.
- Hair loss: 3.3% on 2.4 mg (4% of women, 0.9% of men); on 7.2 mg, 8.4% of women against 0.2% of men. Hair loss page.
- Diabetic eye disease, in people with type 2 diabetes: retinal disorders 6.9% on 2.4 mg, 6.2% on 1 mg and 4.2% on placebo.
The warnings
The label carries a boxed warning on thyroid C-cell tumours seen in rodents (thyroid cancer page) and eleven Warnings and Precautions: pancreatitis, gallbladder disease, low blood sugar, kidney injury from dehydration, severe gastrointestinal reactions, serious allergic reactions, diabetic retinopathy complications, heart-rate increase, pulmonary aspiration during anaesthesia or deep sedation (surgery page), and never sharing a FlexTouch pen. Its Limitations of Use state that combining Wegovy with other semaglutide-containing products or any other GLP-1 receptor agonist is not recommended. How the reactions change as the dose climbs, across the approved labels, is on our dose and side effects page.
What this page cannot tell you
- What any one person will experience. These are group rates from supervised trials.
- How Wegovy compares with another drug. The label itself warns against cross-programme comparisons. The Zepbound side effects page is built the same way for that label, and the Wegovy and Ozempic comparison explains how the same molecule carries two labels.
- Rates for rare harms after approval. The postmarketing list — pancreatitis including necrotising pancreatitis sometimes resulting in death, bowel obstruction, severe constipation, anaphylaxis, kidney injury — carries no denominator.
Anyone weighing a side effect should take it to their prescriber.
Sources
- WEGOVY (semaglutide) injection and tablets, prescribing information, Novo Nordisk, NDA 215256 and NDA 218316, SPL effective 2026-06-18 — retrieved from DailyMed on 2026-09-23: boxed warning, sections 1, 5, 6.1, 6.2 and 14.
- For contrast only: the April 2024 repackager copy of the Wegovy label that openFDA returns first for a brand-name search (set id f5e548d0-cc79-4c34-a3f5-e20a5b8b6564), which carries a single 2.4 mg column and no tablet or 7.2 mg data.