Research published today might leave a bad taste in your mouth and a crinkle in your nose if you’re taking a GLP-1 medication like semaglutide (the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy). Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel examined the medical records of people with type 2 diabetes. People taking a GLP-1, they found, had a noticeably higher chance of being diagnosed with smell or taste disturbances than those taking a different diabetes drug. Though the absolute risk appears to be small, more study is warranted to confirm whether GLP-1s can negatively affect some people’s sense of smell and taste, the researchers say. The findings highlight “the need for closer monitoring and greater public health awareness,” they wrote in their paper, published Thursday in JAMA Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery. Smellzempic? GLP-1 drugs have greatly improved the treatment of type 2 diabetes and obesity. Yet no drug is completely risk-free. And since GLP-1s have skyrocketed in popularity over the past few years, researchers have identified new, if usually rare, potential side effects linked to them. Some reports have recently tied smell and taste issues to GLP-1 use, which made the current study researchers curious enough to dig further. The researchers analyzed medical records from a large database of patients treated at more than 170 health care centers across the world. Ultimately, they compared the outcomes of roughly 439,000 type 2 diabetes patients taking a GLP-1 with those of a similarly sized group of patients, closely matched in age and other characteristics, taking another medication.