A former nurse practitioner at Grady Memorial Hospital says she lost vision in one eye just weeks after starting the weight-loss drug Wegovy, and now she wants the U.S. government to force drugmakers to warn other patients before it happens to them too. Diane Wirth was diagnosed with non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy, or NAION, a condition sometimes called an eye stroke, after starting the drug in 2025.
Wirth's case was first reported by Channel 2 Action News the previous month, and she has since told WSB-TV that her vision is not what it used to be. She said she was not warned about the possibility of blindness before she began taking the drug, and that she would not have started it had she known. Wirth is now part of a federal multidistrict lawsuit alleging that drugmakers failed to warn patients about the risk.
An Eye Condition With No Cure
NAION is caused by reduced blood flow to the optic nerve, and the vision loss it causes is permanent. There is currently no approved treatment to reverse the damage once it occurs, and the condition is the second most common cause of optic nerve-related blindness in adults after glaucoma, occurring in roughly 2 to 10 out of every 100,000 people annually, according to research from Mass Eye and Ear. Wirth lost her job and her independence after losing her eyesight, per her account to the station.
Jason Goldstein said NAION can occur suddenly and permanently, according to WSB-TV's reporting. That sudden onset is part of what has made the condition so alarming to regulators and patients alike as GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro have become widely prescribed for diabetes and weight loss.
Europe Moved First, The U.S. Has Not
Europe was the first region to add a warning label addressing possible blindness tied to semaglutide drugs. The European Medicines Agency's Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee concluded in June 2025 that NAION is a very rare side effect of semaglutide, affecting up to 1 in 10,000 users, and recommended updating product labels across Europe to list the condition and instruct patients to stop treatment if diagnosed, according to the European Medicines Agency. That same month, the World Health Organization issued a global medical product alert on the risk, recommending that drug risk management plans be revised internationally given how widely GLP-1 drugs are prescribed.
Canada and Australia followed Europe's action. Canada updated safety information for Ozempic and Mounjaro to address NAION, while Australia updated its own warning information and now tells patients to seek immediate care for sudden vision loss. The FDA, meanwhile, has not added a NAION warning to U.S. labels, and per the agency it is continuing to evaluate the potential safety of GLP-1 drugs.
What The Research Shows
The scientific picture is not uniform. A 2024 study in JAMA Ophthalmology found an association between semaglutide drugs and NAION, with Mass Eye and Ear researchers reporting that patients prescribed semaglutide for overweight or obesity had a 7.64-fold higher risk of developing the condition compared to non-users, while type 2 diabetes patients on semaglutide had a 4.28-fold higher risk. A follow-up study published in JAMA Ophthalmology in February 2025, led by Johns Hopkins researchers and covering electronic health records of more than 37 million people with type 2 diabetes, found a smaller but still statistically significant 32 percent increased relative risk among semaglutide users, according to HealthDay.
A pharmacovigilance study published on PubMed in March 2025, analyzing FDA Adverse Event Reporting System data through December 2024, found a reporting odds ratio of 17.57 for semaglutide and NAION compared to other diabetes and obesity medications. More recently, an observational study of national health registries in Denmark and Norway, published in PLOS Medicine in May 2026, reported that semaglutide users experienced a threefold higher risk of developing NAION compared to patients using SGLT-2 inhibitors.
Novo Nordisk disputes that GLP-1 drugs have a proven causal link to NAION. The company says it reviewed more than 96,000 patients and, per its own review, found no increased risk of the condition. Eli Lilly also disputes a proven causal link, with the company saying the evidence does not establish a causal relationship between GLP-1 receptor agonists and NAION.
Litigation Piles Up As Patients Wait
Wirth's case is one of many now moving through the courts. In December 2025, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation established MDL No. 3163 in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania to centralize failure-to-warn lawsuits alleging GLP-1 drugs caused NAION, separate from existing gastrointestinal injury claims, according to court records from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Judge Karen S. Marston presides over both that litigation and the separate gastrointestinal MDL. The following month, the Supreme Court of New Jersey designated all pending and future state court lawsuits alleging NAION vision loss from GLP-1 drugs for centralized management in Bergen County Superior Court, since major drugmakers maintain corporate operations in that state, per Pope McGlamry.
Medical societies are not telling patients to abandon these drugs. A joint clinical statement by the American Academy of Ophthalmology and the North American Neuro-Ophthalmology Society advised that patients should not stop taking semaglutide on their own, but should seek immediate medical evaluation and cease use if they experience sudden vision loss. The CDC has said, per the agency, that people taking GLP-1 weight loss drugs may want to see an ophthalmologist before starting treatment.
For Wirth, the debate over statistics and causation is beside the point. She has said plainly that she would not have taken the drug had she been warned about the possibility of losing her sight. Her case now sits alongside thousands of others in the federal MDL, waiting on a regulatory system that, unlike Europe, Canada, and Australia, has yet to put the word blindness on a U.S. label.
The vision-loss debate is a companion concern to other GLP-1 safety questions Hoodline has tracked this year, including fears over Ozempic-linked stomach paralysis and concerns about compounded weight-loss injections sold outside regulated pharmacy channels.
