The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has ordered an online pharmacy to change its advertising for weight loss prescription-only medicines (POMs) after it breached its rules for the second time.
Quick Meds was listed on an MHRA decision alongside two weight loss clinics earlier this month (November 7) following complaints about POMs being advertised to the public.
The warning said that “images of, or information about, medicines that are not licensed for weight loss should not be presented as such on their webpages”.
Read more: Mum landed in hospital after taking Facebook ad Mounjaro
The MHRA told C+D last week (November 14) that it received a complaint in March that “alleged that a POM indicated for weight loss was being advertised to the public” via “a consumer email”.
The complaint “was upheld on investigation” as the email breached regulations that prohibit “the issue of an advertisement to the public that is likely to lead to the use of a POM”, the regulator confirmed.
Read more: Wegovy: Regulators removing ‘around 100’ social media POM ads every day
“We advised Quick Meds that its advertising material must comply with the advertising regulations,” the MHRA said.
“It agreed to review its materials to ensure compliance [and] since it agreed to this action, no further action was taken,” it added.
But the regulator stressed that its decision announcement “relates to specific advertising action taken on a particular date and is no endorsement of the ongoing practices of the website”.
Read more: Wegovy: Ten deaths linked to weight loss injections, says MHRA
C+D understands that the issue was related to the listing of off-label medication Ozempic as one of the products used to manage weight loss on an information page.
While Quick Meds disagrees that this constituted advertising or was promotional, this reference to Ozempic was removed, C+D understands.
However, Quick Meds declined to comment.
Repeat offender
Quick Meds, which opened in 2020 and holds an NHS contract as well as offering “pharmacist independent prescriber-led prescribing”, “mainly supplies medicines to support weight loss”, according to its latest General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) inspection report.
A previous advertising investigation into Quick Meds took place in 2021, which had an almost identical decision to the latest investigation.
Read more: Wegovy: GPhC cracks down on POM discount codes after C+D exposé
The 2021 decision said that Quick Meds had “amended [its] advertising for weight loss treatment services following MHRA action on complaints to ensure that licensed POMs - including advertising a particular medicine to treat conditions for which it is not licensed - and/or unlicensed medicines are not promoted”.
It comes after C+D last week (November 13) reported that a mum of three was landed in hospital shortly after taking weight loss jab Mounjaro, having “bought into” an online pharmacy’s ad for the drug on social media.
Read more: Revealed: Online pharmacies use ‘TikTok stars’ to shift discount weight loss jabs
Earlier this month, the MHRA confirmed to C+D that it had received reports of some 10 deaths “with glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1RAs) indicated for weight management” such as Wegovy and Mounjaro.
And a consultation published by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) last month revealed NHS England (NHSE) proposals to offer weight loss drug Mounjaro (tirzepatide) to millions of people over the next decade.