Ozempic, different weight reduction medication might curb alcohol habit
Weight reduction medication corresponding to Ozempic and Wegovy are enormously standard for individuals with diabetes, weight problems and cardiovascular danger. So, well being professionals puzzled: May these medication even be the important thing to curbing extra consuming?
Actually, glucagon-like peptide 1 medication corresponding to semaglutide and liraglutide might be efficient at curbing alcohol abuse, a research revealed Wednesday in JAMA Psychiatry suggests. Researchers in Sweden examined greater than 1 / 4 million individuals with alcohol-use dysfunction and located those that had taken GLP-1 medication reduce their danger for hospitalization.
Researchers not concerned within the research described it as an vital discovering and one scientists had been investigating lately. Nevertheless, they warned that Ozempic just isn’t but prepared to interchange the three medicines accepted by the Meals and Drug Administration for alcohol abuse.
“These medicines are very promising,” mentioned Lorenzo Leggio, a scientific investigator and part chief on the Nationwide Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and Nationwide Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). “However we’ve not actually reached the purpose to say, ‘Sure, they work.’ They could work.”
Leggio mentioned extra analysis, screening and therapy are wanted to handle alcohol habit. Almost 29 million People have alcohol use dysfunction as of 2023, in keeping with the NIAAA. That represents about 1 in 10 People over the age of 12.
However solely 2% of individuals with alcohol habit are handled for the illness, Leggio mentioned.
“The quantity of people that die due to alcohol is definitely gigantic. It is even larger than opioids,” mentioned Leggio, referring to the habit disaster that started with ache drugs and morphed into individuals taking illicit fentanyl.
The discovering within the research just isn’t the primary of its type.
A 2022 research of 127 individuals discovered that GLP-1 drug exenatide lowered consuming amongst sufferers with weight problems. Different research confirmed these weight-loss medication can curb alcohol use in animals. Nevertheless, researchers cautioned that extra proof can be wanted to conclude these medication may very well be used to deal with alcohol and drug abuse.
Within the Sweden research, researchers recognized greater than 133,000 individuals who had been hospitalized for alcohol habit between January 2006 and December 2023. About 4,500 sufferers who took semaglutide, bought below the manufacturers Ozempic and Wegovy, had the bottom danger of hospitalization. One other 2,500 who took liraglutide, marketed as Victoza and Saxenda, had the second lowest danger.
And there was one other notable discovering. The research decided that alcohol-addicted sufferers who took both model of the load loss medication had been much less more likely to be hospitalized than those that took any of three present medicines accepted to deal with alcohol-use dysfunction. The medication getting used to deal with alcohol-use dysfunction are disulfiram, acamprosate and naltrexone.
Researchers not concerned within the research cautioned it doesn’t show the favored weight-loss medication work to restrict consuming.
Sarah Church, a scientific psychologist and govt director of Wholeview Wellness in New York Metropolis, mentioned extra strong research are wanted
“It’s essential for us to get the outcomes of a randomized managed trial that compares GLP-1s to the opposite FDA-approved medicines for (alcohol habit) earlier than we leap to conclusions in regards to the relative effectiveness of the totally different medicines,” Church mentioned.
Leggio’s group at NIAAA and NIDA is enrolling sufferers in a single such research that can randomly assign alcohol-dependent sufferers to both semaglutide or a placebo. The research, which can comply with sufferers over 5 months, will seemingly not be completed till 2026.
