PARIS, March 6 \u2014 Taking a new generation of weight-loss medication is linked to a significantly lower risk of addiction and death from drugs such as cocaine and alcohol, a large US study suggested on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The massively popular drugs known as GLP-1 agonists could even halve people\u2019s risk of dying from a range of harmful substances, according to the research published in the BMJ journal on Thursday.<\/p>\n
However outside experts urged caution in interpreting the results, which do not establish a causal link, calling for clinical trials to find out more.<\/p>\n
As GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic have transformed the treatment of diabetes and obesity in recent years, they have also shown signs of helping with a surprising variety of health problems \u2014 including addiction.<\/p>\n
The US team of researchers analysed the medical records of more than 600,000 people with type 2 diabetes in the US Department of Veterans Affairs\u2019 healthcare database who took either GLP-1s or an older kind of diabetes drug.<\/p>\n
The researchers then looked at the effect of drugs including alcohol, cannabis, cocaine, nicotine and opioids over three years.<\/p>\n
For veterans who already had a drug addiction, taking GLP-1s had a 50-per cent lower rate of death and a 40-per cent lower rate of overdose.<\/p>\n
The rate of emergency department visits was more than 30 per cent 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-per cent lower risk of developing one.<\/p>\n
\u2018Quite a surprise\u2019<\/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. 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 \u2014 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. \u2014 AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PARIS, March 6 \u2014 Taking a new generation of weight-loss medication is linked to a significantly lower risk…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":508799,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[231028,67114,97,243,249,231027,3629,12646],"class_list":["post-508798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-medication","tag-bmj-journal","tag-glp-1-agonists","tag-health","tag-medication","tag-ozempic","tag-substance-use-disorders","tag-type-2-diabetes","tag-weight-loss-medication"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=508798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508798\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/508799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}