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Two deaths reported to the FDA after people used products sold as retatrutide

The FDA received reports in July and September that two people died after using products sold as retatrutide, a Lilly drug no regulator has approved.

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Two people died after using products sold as retatrutide, according to FDA adverse event reports CBS News obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. CBS says they appear to be the first public U.S. accounts alleging unauthorized retatrutide played a role in a death, and the details are unverified.

The first report reached the FDA in July from a healthcare professional. It describes a 41-year-old woman with obesity who went into cardiac arrest and says she got the drug from an "unreliable source." The second reached the FDA in September. It describes a 49-year-old woman who died after severe dehydration, malnutrition and cardiac arrest. The report says a licensed nurse had talked her into buying the product from an online peptide vendor.

The reports do not prove the drug caused either death, and nothing in them shows what the vials contained. According to CBS, the FDA would not say whether it had verified either report, and neither death was part of a formal clinical trial, per the documents and Eli Lilly.

Retatrutide is a Lilly drug still in phase 3 trials. No regulator has approved it, and Lilly has said it plans to file for U.S. approval in the first quarter of 2027. The FDA said in June that consumer sales of retatrutide and other unapproved GLP-1 products are illegal and that they cannot be lawfully compounded. America's Poison Centers logged 862 exposures to retatrutide in the three months ending in September, up from 460 in the three months before, which CBS notes is typical for a newly tracked drug.

If you want a GLP-1 you can verify, the options are an FDA-approved brand or a licensed pharmacy's compounded product, with a prescription from a clinician who examines you. The lowest brand-name price we track is $299 a month, for the Wegovy pill at the maintenance dose, bought from the drugmaker. The cheapest program on our chart is Collective at $76 a month, with the $199 yearly membership averaged in. It sells compounded semaglutide, a pharmacy-made version that is not FDA-approved and is not Wegovy or Ozempic. Our page on where retatrutide stands tracks the clinical trials.

Prices on the chart were last checked on October 12, 2026. Compare what 33 programs charge this week.

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