Scientists hope a weight loss drug already being used to treat obesity and diabetes could also benefit patients impacted by alcohol dependence and obesity, two of the biggest causes of liver disease.<\/p>\n
Semaglutide, also known as Wegovy, works by mimicking the GLP-1 hormone and has been shown to slow digestion and suppress appetite – now researchers are launching a trial to explore if it could be used to help people with alcohol dependency, obesity and liver disease.<\/p>\n
The four-year CURB (Controlling Unhealthy Relationships with Both alcohol and obesity) project is being funded by a grant of more than \u00a32.7million from the National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR), and will be co-led by the University of Plymouth, University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust, and the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre: Nottingham.<\/p>\n
Working with other UK partners, they will assess whether semaglutide does indeed reduce alcohol consumption in people with alcohol use disorder (AUD), obesity and liver disease.<\/p>\n
If the trial is successful, it is hoped the drug could change the way alcohol-related liver disease and obesity are treated, helping to guide future care in the UK and beyond.<\/p>\n
Alcohol use is one of the UK’s leading causes of death, costing the NHS \u00a35 billion each year, and harmful drinking is the country’s main cause of liver disease. About half of those living with alcohol-related liver disease are obese, and the combination of alcohol consumption and obesity can speed up liver damage and death.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientists hope a weight loss drug already being used to treat obesity and diabetes could also benefit patients…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324640,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[64,63,137],"class_list":["post-861828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=861828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=861828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=861828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=861828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}