Beware the Ozempic Burp
On the November morning when the sulfur burps began, Derron Borders was welcoming prospective students at the graduate school where he works in New York. Every few minutes, no matter how hard he tried to stop, another foul-smelling cloud escaped his mouth. “Burps that taste and smell like rotten eggs—I think that’s what I typed in Google,” he told me.
Eventually, Borders learned that his diabetes medication was to blame. Sulfur burps appear to be a somewhat rare side effect of semaglutide, tirzepatide, and other drugs in their class,. Over the past several years, these medications have become under the brand names Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro, as a diabetes treatment and a weight-loss drug. And as prescription numbers rise, a strange and unpleasant side effect has been growing more apparent too.
