The weight loss and diabetes drug semaglutide may also help people reduce their alcohol intake.
A study of nearly 700,000 people who were taking the medicine, sold under the brand names Wegovy and Ozempic, adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting the drug may have wider uses in people with a range of addictions.
“This is the strongest evidence yet in humans,” says at the University of Copenhagen, who wasn’t involved in the study.
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Semaglutide and similar medicines work by mimicking a gut hormone called GLP-1, normally released after eating, which reduces appetite and boosts the blood sugar-regulating hormone insulin.
These GLP-1 mimics, usually given as injections, were first used to treat type 2 diabetes, but a formulation called Wegovy was licensed in 2021 for weight loss in people without diabetes, after which their popularity exploded.
Signs that these drugs might also have an effect on addiction first emerged from studies in animals, where they . And with growing numbers of people taking injections of Ozempic and Wegovy, some have reported that they lost their desire to drink or take illegal drugs.
But it is unclear if lower alcohol consumption is directly caused by the medicines or if there is another explanation. For instance, someone who wants to lose weight could also be trying to get healthier in other ways, like cutting out alcohol.
The latest study gets around that problem by comparing people taking semaglutide with those using other weight loss drugs that aren’t GLP-1 mimics, says at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.
Xu’s team analysed the health records of nearly 84,000 people taking either semaglutide or a different kind of obesity drug and recorded how many were diagnosed with alcohol use disorder over 12 months. Those on semaglutide were half as likely to get that diagnosis.
There was a similar pattern found in a further analysis by the team of 600,000 people with type 2 diabetes taking either semaglutide or other kinds of diabetes medicines.
“To our knowledge, this is the largest study [of this kind] done so far,” says Xu. “This is a strong indication this medication may be beneficial for both preventing and treating alcohol use disorders.”
Xu’s team has also used a similar method to show that the semaglutide class of medicines may reduce the risk of getting addicted to cannabis.
But we will only know for sure if these drugs can combat addictions when we find out the results of ongoing randomised trials designed to investigate this question, she says.
Fink-Jensen says the GLP-1 mimics may help with addiction because they affect the brain’s reward circuitry. People may sometimes get addicted to drugs or alcohol because these substances affect the same circuits that make eating pleasurable, he says.
But one risk of using Ozempic as a treatment for addiction is that if people are thin to start with, they may become dangerously underweight, he says.
Nature Communications
