Know what to discuss and when help cannot wait.

When help cannot wait

Zepbound’s medicine information warns about serious swelling and damage in the pancreas, an organ that helps digestion. Lasting or severe belly pain that may spread to the back can be a sign of this problem.

Get urgent medical help for lasting or severe belly pain, especially pain spreading to your back. Do not wait for your next planned visit.

Stomach problems and the follow-up plan

In Zepbound weight trials, nausea affected about 25% to 29% of people taking it, compared with 8% given a dummy injection.

Nausea means feeling sick to your stomach; the dummy injection had no active medicine.

Diarrhea, vomiting, and constipation were also common in those trials.

Zepbound’s medicine information warns that losing too much fluid through stomach problems can damage the kidneys.

The medicine information advises against Zepbound for people with severe gastroparesis. This is a diagnosed condition where food moves out of the stomach very slowly.

If you have been told you have this condition, tell the clinician before treatment. Ask for help naming any stomach problem you cannot describe clearly.

Zepbound’s medicine information also warns about gallbladder problems and serious allergic reactions. The gallbladder is a small organ that helps digestion.

Ask whom to contact if symptoms begin, what needs urgent attention, and how follow-up decisions are made.

Thyroid history and past allergy

The medicine information for both brands carries a boxed warning, the FDA’s strongest warning format, about thyroid tumors found in rats.

Whether tirzepatide causes these tumors in people is unknown.

A history of medullary thyroid cancer in you or your family rules out tirzepatide under the warning. Medullary thyroid cancer is a rare thyroid cancer.

The medicine information also rules it out with MEN 2, a rare inherited condition.

Tirzepatide is also ruled out after a serious allergic reaction to it or to any of its ingredients.

Ask about any family diagnosis you cannot name clearly.

Pregnancy, other medicines, and surgery

Tirzepatide can briefly make birth-control pills less effective.

The Zepbound medicine information calls for a non-pill or backup birth-control method after treatment begins or the dose increases.

It specifies four weeks after starting treatment and after each dose increase.

The medicine information tells prescribers to stop Zepbound when pregnancy is found.

The medicine information warns about low blood sugar when tirzepatide is used with insulin or certain diabetes pills.

Existing diabetes-related eye problems can also get worse.

The medicine information also warns that stomach contents can enter the lungs during anesthesia, the medicine used during surgery.

Ask the care team for a personal plan for these situations.