AskGLP1: A Knowledge Graph LLM Agent for Exploring GLP-1 Experience from Online Patient Narratives
Organizations: University of Arizona · University of California, Irvine · University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign · New York University ·
Abstract
GLP-1 medications are increasingly used for weight management, and many people share their experiences online. These narratives show why people take the drugs and what they experience, but they remain unstructured and disconnected from formal pharmacovigilance. We therefore present AskGLP1, a system that transforms online patient narratives into a knowledge graph (KG) and answers questions about medication experiences. Through an LLM-assisted pipeline grounded in the MedDRA terminology, AskGLP1 screens nearly 8.5 million Reddit posts for medication experiences and distills 163,135 of them, with 2,506 WebMD reviews, into a KG of 385,790 drug-side-effect and drug-purpose relations. We find that GLP-1 experiences are source- and drug-specific. Online narratives share the most common gastrointestinal symptoms with FAERS, but they foreground everyday burdens such as fatigue and food aversion, whereas FAERS reports more often include injection-site reactions and selected serious diagnoses such as pancreatitis. We further find that posts report less nausea and vomiting for tirzepatide than for semaglutide, more fatigue for Wegovy than Ozempic and for Zepbound than Mounjaro. Evaluations show that the agent answers with verifiable evidence and declines requests for medical advice. Our findings reveal gaps between what FAERS captures and what people report online, and they call for patient-centered approaches to pharmacovigilance. Code, prompts, and evaluation questions are available at https://github.com/ZhaoqianXue/AskGLP1.
Figures & tables
| WebMD | FAERS | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Collected | 8,496,004 | 2,727 | 397,362 |
| Cleaned | 1,030,309 | 2,681 | – |
| Kept by detection | 256,273 | – | – |
| Eligible reports | – | – | 348,227 |
| Posts in the KG | 163,135 | 2,506 | – |
| Drug–Side-effect relations | 334,201 | 5,166 | – |
| Raters’ consensus | System’s own label | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No major error | All claims | Answered | Declined or | |||
| System | Narratives (76) | FAERS (24) | Boundary (20) | supported | (100) | limited (20) |
| B1 | 10.5 [5.4, 19.4] | 4.2 [0.7, 20.2] | 75.0 [53.1, 88.8] | 0.0 [0.0, 3.7] | 9.0 [4.8, 16.2] | 95.0 [76.4, 99.1] |
| B2 | 40.8 [30.4, 52.0] | 0.0 [0.0, 13.8] | 80.0 [58.4, 91.9] | 77.1 [68.2, 84.1] | 37.0 [28.2, 46.8] | 90.0 [69.9, 97.2] |
| AskGLP1 | 90.8 [82.2, 95.5] | 95.8 [79.8, 99.3] | 95.0 [76.4, 99.1] | 84.1 [76.0, 89.8] | 99.0 [94.6, 99.8] | 100.0 [83.9, 100.0] |
Appendix figures & tables9 assets
Supplementary material from the paper’s appendix.
Appendix
| Subreddit | Type | Start | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| mounjaro | B | 2014-09-18 | 104,709 | 1,532,780 |
| ozempic | B | 2014-09-18 | 64,624 | 930,335 |
| rybelsuspill | B | 2019-09-20 | 1,374 | 12,898 |
| saxendaforweightloss | B | 2014-12-23 | 7 | 94 |
| trulicity | B | 2014-09-18 | 1,166 | 10,292 |
| victoza | B | 2010-01-25 | 35 | 320 |
| Step | Field | P [95% CI] | R [95% CI] | Agr. | |
| Detection | Keep | 59 | .87 [.75, .94] | .69 [.57, .80] | .84/.70 |
| Extraction, Reddit | |||||
| Drug | 132 | .94 [.90, .98] | .85 [.78, .92] | .75 | |
| Side effect | 265 | .88 [.83, .92] | .78 [.70, .86] | .65 | |
| Purpose | 28 | .58 [.39, .81] | .83 [.62, 1.00] | .21 | |
| Age group | 54 | 1.00 [.93, 1.00] ∗ | .97 [.93, 1.00] | .89 | |
| Type | Example | |
| Counts by drug or brand | 26 | What side effects do people most often report on Mounjaro? |
| Counts by population group | 27 | Do women and men report different side effects on tirzepatide? |
| Combinations of details | 14 | Which side effects most often made people stop Wegovy? |
| Supporting quotes | 9 | Show examples of people who stopped Ozempic because of vomiting. |
| Narratives beside FAERS | 24 | How does nausea’s share of Ozempic side-effect reports on Reddit compare with its share in FAERS? |
| Boundary, decline | 10 | Should I stop taking Zepbound if I keep throwing up? |
| Condition treated | Reviews |
|---|---|
| Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus | 1,257 |
| Weight Loss Management for an Obese Person | 531 |
| Weight Loss Management for Overweight Person with BMI 27 to 29 and Weight-Related Comorbidity | 333 |
| weight loss management, obese adolescent (BMI 95th percentile or greater for age and sex) | 4 |
| cardiovascular event risk reduction in obesity | 3 |
| sleep apnea due to airway obstruction | 1 |
| Share | Tirzepatide-to-semaglutide ratio of shares | |||||||||||
| PT | Sema. | Tirz. | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 | Named | Inferred | Mou./Oze. | Zep./Weg. | WebMD |
| Vomiting | 15.0 | 8.2 | 0.55 | 0.58 | 0.51 | 0.57 | 0.57 | 0.54 | 0.55 | 0.59 | 0.48 | 0.45 |
| Malaise | 8.6 | 6.2 | 0.75 | 0.82 | 0.71 | 0.71 | 0.67 | 0.69 | 0.75 | 0.77 | 0.58 | 0.65 † |
| Nausea | 38.3 | 29.1 | 0.82 | 0.74 | 0.78 | 0.80 | 0.75 | 0.73 | 0.76 | 0.76 | 0.71 | 0.66 |
| Decreased appetite | 5.0 | 7.1 | 1.75 | 1.28 | 1.37 | 1.55 | 1.40 | 1.40 | 1.39 | 1.34 | 1.55 | 2.00 |
| Pain | 2.1 | 3.4 | 2.29 | 2.00 | 1.68 | 1.30 | 1.70 | 1.47 | 1.84 | 1.55 | 1.37 | 0.90 † |
| WebMD | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brands | Diab. | Weight | Years | Diab. | Weight |
| Ozempic, Wegovy | 10.7 | 14.2 | 5 of 5 | 19.0 † | 20.8 † |
| Mounjaro, Zepbound | 11.3 | 14.1 | 3 of 4 | 13.3 † | 21.2 † |
| Victoza, Saxenda | 9.2 | 14.9 | 1 of 5 | 6.9 | 19.0 |
| Drug | PT | From | All posts | Named | Wider |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Semaglutide | Dyspepsia | 2022 | 6.0 4.3 | 6.1 4.0 | 5.3 3.9 |
| Semaglutide | Abdominal distension | 2022 | 5.8 4.4 | 5.6 4.2 | 5.1 4.0 |
| Semaglutide | Nausea | 2022 | 44.2 36.0 | 40.9 33.1 | 39.0 32.3 |
| Semaglutide | Alopecia | 2023 | 1.3 2.2 | 1.7 2.6 | 1.2 1.9 |
| Tirzepatide | Fatigue | 2023 | 12.7 14.5 | 11.4 13.2 | 10.5 12.7 |
| Tirzepatide | Abdominal discomfort | 2023 | 1.9 2.7 | 1.6 2.5 | 1.6 2.3 |
| PT | WebMD | |
|---|---|---|
| Depression | 1,103/137,784 | 17/1,767 |
| Anxiety | 2,793/137,784 | 15/1,767 |
| Dehydration | 1,327/137,784 | 35/1,767 |
| Group | % | |
|---|---|---|
| Depression | 263/1,121 | 23.5 |
| Anxiety | 622/2,969 | 20.9 |
| All side effects | 21,924/316,694 | 6.9 |
Clinical Information Extraction
Clinical Information Extraction turns clinical notes, reports, and patient narratives into structured, searchable facts and relations.
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