“I am the luckiest person to be alive,” Kay Roscoe told BBC News after spending over an hour unconscious following an injection bought online.
Roscoe, a 38-year-old resident of Birkenhead, spent two months using an unapproved substance advertised online as retatrutide before collapsing in her home. Her friend discovered her unresponsive, unable to speak or stand, and immediately called for an ambulance. Medical personnel at the hospital confirmed she suffered severe hypoglycaemia caused by an unlicensed weight-loss injection. Doctors warned her that a delay of just another thirty minutes would have proved fatal.
The experimental drug retatrutide, currently developed by pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly as an obesity treatment, remains unavailable for public use outside clinical trials.
Eli Lilly said that counterfeit and black market medicines present severe health risks because they lack regulatory verification. The UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency has seized several products falsely claiming to contain the compound.
Rising private prescription costs and lengthy NHS wait times continue pushing individuals toward unregulated online sellers.
Surveys conducted by Ipsos indicate that roughly 9 percent of UK adults would purchase weight-loss injections via social media if regular prescriptions were unavailable. MedExpress research further shows that over 20 percent of GLP-1 users obtained unverified pens, with adults aged 25 to 34 showing the highest vulnerability.
Medical professionals caution that underground weight-loss products carry severe physiological hazards. Dr Nas Khattak, a Chester research doctor who has worked on clinical trials of weight-loss drugs, warned that users cannot verify the dose, purity, sterility, or contents of black market injections.
“It really does feel like a roll of the dice,” Khattak told BBC News, noting that he has treated intensive care patients who developed critical complications after taking unverified cosmetic injections. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a warning letter to the online supplier Cheap Medicine Shop over unapproved semaglutide products.
Federal data cited by the FDA recorded 990 adverse-event reports associated with compounded semaglutide and over 730 linked to compounded tirzepatide. Regulators emphasize that compounded formulations do not undergo the same premarket safety reviews as FDA-approved medications.
In South Africa, the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority issued similar warnings regarding illegal peptide-based weight-loss products containing unverified salt forms like semaglutide sodium. Inspectors discovered imported active pharmaceutical ingredients lacking analytical purity testing alongside inadequate sterile manufacturing conditions.
Dr Khattak said that mild nausea, early satiety, constipation, and fatigue rank among standard medication effects. Dehydration signs such as headaches, dizziness, dry mouth, and dark urine require immediate medical consultation. Urgent medical attention is necessary if patients experience persistent vomiting, diarrhoea, pain beneath the right ribs, yellowing of the eyes, or significant mood shifts.
Roscoe continues to suffer lingering health complications, including extreme fatigue, high cholesterol, and signs of liver damage identified during post-hospitalization testing. She now urges others to avoid unverified online medications.
“Please, everyone, stop taking a needle to be skinny,” Roscoe told BBC News.
“I've never had a problem with anything like this. I just feel run down and drained. My body feels all over the place,” Kay Roscoe said.
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