The researchers then looked at the effect of drugs including alcohol, cannabis, cocaine, nicotine and opioids over three years.<\/p>\n
The study found a 50% lower death rate and 40% lower overdose rate for users with addiction. Photo \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n
For veterans who already had a drug addiction, taking GLP-1s was linked to a 50% lower rate of death and a 40% lower rate of overdose.<\/p>\n
The rate of emergency department visits was more than 30% lower, while hospital admissions and suicidal thoughts or attempts were down by a quarter.<\/p>\n
Among veterans with no history of drug addiction, taking GLP-1s was linked with a 14% lower risk of developing one.<\/p>\n
Ziyad Al-Aly, an epidemiologist at Washington University in St Louis and the study\u2019s senior author, told AFP it was \u201cquite a surprise\u201d how many substance-use disorders the GLP-1s appeared to prevent.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe effect was not confined to one substance, it was evident across the board for all addictive substances,\u201d he told AFP.<\/p>\n
The research is observational, so cannot directly prove that the GLP-1s caused the results seen in the study.<\/p>\n
And exactly how these appetite-suppressing drugs could fight addiction remains unclear. <\/p>\n
However, there have been suggestions they could have an impact on how our brains reward certain behaviours.<\/p>\n
The researchers also warned that the participants were mostly older white men \u2013 though the results appeared consistent for women as well.<\/p>\n
Fares Qeadan, a biostatistics expert at Loyola University Chicago not involved in the research, said the \u201cimplications are pragmatic rather than revolutionary\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cPolicymakers should therefore avoid premature \u2018Ozempic for addiction\u2019 narratives,\u201d Qeadan said in a linked editorial in the BMJ.<\/p>\n
And even if clinical trials confirm these drugs are effective against addiction, they are expensive and not available equally to all countries, he added.<\/p>\n
-Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The researchers then looked at the effect of drugs including alcohol, cannabis, cocaine, nicotine and opioids over three…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":458341,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[19575,235,30119,2989,20619,2505,900,8953,102,38270,56524,37890,6591,4995,8682,4848,165042,14434,552,102995,54759,68847,1850,15455,56,3354,54,55,52880],"class_list":["post-458340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-medication","tag-addiction","tag-alcohol","tag-cocaine","tag-death","tag-drug","tag-drugs","tag-from","tag-generation","tag-health","tag-large","tag-linked","tag-lower","tag-medication","tag-of","tag-risk","tag-says","tag-significantly","tag-states","tag-study","tag-such","tag-suggested","tag-taking","tag-to","tag-today","tag-uk","tag-united","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-weightloss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=458340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/458341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}