What the latest research says<\/p>\n
A large study of more than 1.6 million people with Type two diabetes found that people who took GLP-1s had \u201csignificant risk reduction\u201d in 10 out of 13 obesity-associated cancers compared with those taking insulin, according to peer-reviewed results published in 2024 in JAMA Network Open.<\/p>\n
Another large-scale study published in August 2025 looked at adults with obesity and found that people taking the weight loss medication were \u201csignificantly associated with a reduced risk of overall cancer\u201d. <\/p>\n
The researchers observed that the lowered risk was particularly notable for endometrial, meningioma (which affects the brain) and ovarian cancers. But they also observed a \u201cnonsignificant increased risk\u201d of kidney cancer in people who were taking the drugs.<\/p>\n
\u201cOverall, it has a somewhat protective effect,\u201d said Jiang Bian, chief research information officer at the Indiana University Melvin and Bren Simon Comprehensive Cancer Centre, who led the research team that studied adults with obesity. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut if you look at individual types of a cancer or different populations, the protective or adverse effects are different.\u201d<\/p>\n
A review of 48 randomided controlled trials found that GLP-1s \u201cmay have little or no effect on risk for obesity-related cancers\u201d, the researchers wrote in a December study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. <\/p>\n
The study focused on thyroid, pancreatic, colorectal, gastric, esophageal, liver, gallbladder, breast, ovarian, endometrial and kidney cancer as well as multiple myeloma and meningioma.<\/p>\n
But other recent studies suggest that GLP-1s can also improve survival among some people diagnosed with cancer.<\/p>\n
Among older adults with cancer and Type two diabetes, taking the medication was associated with lower death rates, according to findings published in July 2025 in JAMA Network Open.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s sort of opened a new avenue for us to explore the GLP-1 use in that special population,\u201d said Serena Guo, a professor at the College of Pharmacy at Purdue University, who was a co-author of the study.<\/p>\n
The drugs could also be helpful for patients with colon cancer. A study of more than 6800 people found that those who were using GLP-1s had less than half the five-year mortality rate compared with non-users, according to results published in November in the peer-reviewed journal Cancer Investigation.<\/p>\n
The findings were consistent when researchers adjusted for demographics, other illnesses and the severity of the patient\u2019s colon cancer diagnosis, said Raphael Cuomo, a professor and cancer researcher at the UC San Diego School of Medicine and the study\u2019s author. <\/p>\n
He noted that people who were obese and taking GLP-1s appeared to benefit \u201cquite a lot more\u201d with regard to lowered death rates compared with patients who were within normal weight ranges.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn this case, we\u2019re seeing that these drugs are having a potentially pretty powerful effect,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cNow, this does need to be validated in randomised trials so we can be certain about whether or not these are having anti-cancer effects or there are other mechanisms at play. But this is very promising evidence that these drugs can be very beneficial for patients with colon cancer.\u201d<\/p>\n
How GLP-1s could help with cancer<\/p>\n
The ability of GLP-1s, which were developed to treat Type two diabetes, to help people lose weight is one way that the drugs could have benefits for cancer, experts said. Obesity is a major risk factor for many types of cancers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a myriad of ways in which obesity in general contributes to cancer risk,\u201d Shen said. <\/p>\n
If you\u2019re able to modify your amount of body fat, also known as adipose tissue, \u201cthen theoretically you should be modifying cancer risk\u201d.<\/p>\n
GLP-1s could also be helping by decreasing diabetes risk and reducing inflammation, which can contribute to the development of cancers, she said.<\/p>\n
Research is ongoing to better understand what GLP-1 drugs might be doing in people with cancer.<\/p>\n
Scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, for instance, are studying the medication\u2019s effect on liposarcoma, a type of cancer that starts in fat cells.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis rare cancer, liposarcoma, gives us a unique opportunity to study what GLP-1 drugs do to cancer cells themselves,\u201d said Erica Pimenta, a physician-scientist who is leading research into whether the weight-loss medications could be a pathway for treating liposarcoma.<\/p>\n
Early studies showed that when GLP-1 drugs were administered to the tumour cells, researchers saw hints that the cells were \u201cturning on or reprogramming themselves to behave more like a normal fat cell\u201d, Pimenta said. There is interest, she added, in seeing if this work in liposarcoma can be applicable to other cancers.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, experts urged people not to rush to start taking GLP-1 medications without consulting healthcare providers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe decision to start one of these is not something that should be taken lightly,\u201d Cuomo said. \u201cThese are long-term regimens, they\u2019re expensive, and they can have side effects.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also important to keep in mind that using the medicine should be paired with healthy lifestyle habits, such as eating well and staying active.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese GLP-1s aren\u2019t Band-Aids as fixes for everything,\u201d Shen said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What the latest research says A large study of more than 1.6 million people with Type two diabetes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238952,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[1443,40728,33147,32955,60783,1052,7800,2534,23604,13982,634,1757,29433,226,134,5838,221,13620,524,130,111,139,69,10903,7192,312,147,140847,46960,6923,14905,102,17450],"class_list":["post-238951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-about","tag-affect","tag-aiming","tag-answer","tag-associated","tag-benefits","tag-body","tag-cancer","tag-causes","tag-continues","tag-death","tag-drugs","tag-glp1","tag-growing","tag-health","tag-help","tag-how","tag-leading","tag-medication","tag-more","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-popular","tag-risk","tag-says","tag-science","tag-understood","tag-weightloss","tag-what","tag-whether","tag-with","tag-worlds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}