For The Union-Tribune
GLP-1 drugs for addiction?
The long-term effects of using GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy for weight loss remain to be fully determined. Though GLP-1 drugs have been used for more than 20 years to treat diabetes, the first drug for weight loss was only approved in 2014, with many more in recent years.
There are, of course, known potential adverse effects of using GLP-1 drugs, from common gastrointestinal issues to kidney problems to vision changes. More long-term, there are reports of “GLP-1 face,” the loss of facial fat causing a more aged appearance due to rapid weight loss. Stopping GLP-1 drugs is linked to significant weight regained within months.
In a new study, published in the journal The BMJ, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis report a new effect: use of GLP-1 drugs is associated with significant reductions in substance-related harms.
Specifically, 50% fewer substance-related deaths, 39% fewer drug overdoses and 26% few drug-related hospitalizations, according to the scientists. The researchers said GLP-1 drugs appear to quiet addictive cravings (“noise”) of all sorts, from drugs to alcohol to food because they work not just as a gut hormone but also in the brain to dampen reward triggers.
Like almost everything about GLP-1 drugs, more research is needed.
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Body of knowledge
Human adults breathe, on average, about 17,000 to 23,000 times a day. Almost as many times as the typical politician “misspeaks” in the same period of time.
Counts
6.3 — Percentage of mental health clinics in the United States that offer services in at least one Asian language* (Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, Korean, Tagalog, among others)
Source: JAMA Health Forum
*Asian language is a geographic term covering thousands of distinct languages across much of the planet. Arabic, for example, originates on the Arabian Peninsula, which is geographically part of Asia.
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Doc talk
Zebra — a colloquial term for the tendency of young doctors to make rare diagnoses. It derives from Dr. Theodore Woodward, who in the 1940s reportedly told medical students, “Don’t look for zebras on Greene Street.” That quote morphed into “When you hear hoof beats behind you, don’t expect to see a zebra,” meaning don’t look for a more exotic diagnosis when there’s a more routine, ordinary explanation.
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Mania of the week
Mavritypophobia — fear of black holes
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Best medicine
At the dentist’s office for oral surgery, a patient was reading through and signing obligatory forms. Joking, he asked the receptionist: “Does this say that even if you pull my head completely off, I can’t sue you?”
The receptionist replied, “No, that’s the next page. This one says you still have to pay us.”
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Observation
“We all get heavier as we get older because there’s a lot more information in our heads.”
— former Serbian NBA player Vlade Divac (1968-)
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Medical history
This week in 1940, in one of the most famous animal tests in medical history, eight mice were inoculated with a lethal dose of streptococci; then four were injected with an experimental compound called penicillin.
The next day, the four mice given streptococci alone were dead while the four with penicillin were healthy.
Penicillin was the world’s first true antibiotic, revolutionizing medicine by providing an effective treatment for bacterial infections that were previously fatal. It is estimated to have saved more than 500 million lives worldwide since mass production and clinical use began in the 1940s.
During World War I, the death rate from bacterial pneumonia in soldiers was around 18%; by World War II, penicillin had contributed to the rate dropping to less than 1%. Though many other antibiotics have since been invented, penicillin remains widely used today and is the cornerstone for treating some bacterial infections, such as strep throat and syphilis.
Perishable publications
Many, if not most, published research papers have titles that defy comprehension. They use specialized jargon, complex words and opaque phrases like “nonlinear dynamics.” Sometimes they don’t, and yet they’re still hard to figure out. Here’s an actual title of an actual published research study: “Crazy like a fox. Validity and ethics of animal models of human psychiatric disease.”
Writing in the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, the researchers found that existing animal models of human psychiatric disease are not valid, something a crazy fox could have told them.
They declared that such models are “rife with circular logic and anthropomorphism,” make unjustified assumptions about subjective experience and any model deemed valid would be inherently unethical.
“If an animal adequately models human subjective experience, then there is no morally relevant difference between that animal and a human,” the authors wrote.
Self-exam
Q: Your thumb is as long as your:
a) Big toe
b) Nose
c) Kneecap
A: Nose
LaFee is vice president of communications for the Sanford Burnham Prebys research institute.