Study wrapper · #792
18 F-FDG PET/CT Five Days Post First Administration of Semaglutide : Side Effects in One Shot.
Editor's note
This case report describes a 60-year-old woman with metastatic breast cancer whose 18F-FDG PET/CT, performed five days after her first semaglutide dose, showed abnormal gastric retention plus gallbladder, colonic and renal uptake patterns interpreted as semaglutide-associated gastroparesis, cholecystitis, colitis and possible dehydration-related acute kidney injury; symptoms resolved with supportive care after withholding the drug. As a single case, causation is inferred from timing and imaging rather than established, and the oncology context complicates attribution. Its real contribution is educational for imaging specialists: GLP-1 agonist side effects can produce striking, potentially misleading uptake patterns on PET/CT. Read it as a clinically instructive image-based observation, not as evidence about the frequency or severity of these effects at population level.
Plain-language abstract
Doctors describe one patient, a 60-year-old woman with advanced breast cancer, who had a whole-body PET/CT scan five days after her very first semaglutide injection. The scan showed her stomach was slow to empty and revealed unusual activity in her gallbladder, colon and kidneys, which the doctors linked to side effects of semaglutide, including slowed digestion, gallbladder and bowel inflammation, and possible kidney strain from dehydration. Her symptoms improved with supportive care once the drug was stopped. Because this is a single patient, and she was also being treated for cancer, it cannot prove semaglutide caused everything seen. Its main value is to alert scan specialists that these medicines can create striking patterns on imaging that might otherwise be misread. It does not tell us how often such effects happen.