{"id":783742,"date":"2026-07-25T13:08:28","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T13:08:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/783742\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T13:08:28","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T13:08:28","slug":"new-studies-reveal-rare-but-real-risk-of-glp-1-drugs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/783742\/","title":{"rendered":"New studies reveal rare but real risk of GLP-1 drugs"},"content":{"rendered":"

July 22 (Reuters) \u2013 The risk \u200cof hair loss<\/a> in patients taking GLP-1 drugs for obesity<\/a> or diabetes, while low, is higher than with other diabetes drugs, new studies suggest.<\/p>\n

At two or more years after starting treatment, the odds of a new diagnosis of alopecia in GLP-1 \u200busers<\/a> were 37 percent higher than in users of so-called SGLT-2 drugs and 68 percent higher versus \u200bDPP-4 drugs, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania reported on Wednesday in\u00a0The BMJ<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Actual rates \u2060of alopecia<\/a> were low, ranging from roughly three to nine per 1,000 people per year, with between \u200b11,000 and 15,000 people in each drug-class group.<\/p>\n

The risk \u200cof hair loss in patients taking GLP-1 drugs for obesity or diabetes, while low, is higher than with other diabetes drugs, new studies suggest. millaf (Nemchinova) \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

At two or more years after starting treatment, the odds of a new diagnosis of alopecia in GLP-1 \u200busers were 37 percent higher than in users of so-called SGLT-2 drugs, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania reported on Wednesday. SHOTPRIME STUDIO \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

GLP-1 drugs in the study included semaglutide, sold by Novo Nordisk \u200bas Wegovy and Ozempic<\/a>; tirzepatide, sold by Eli Lilly as Zepbound and Mounjaro; and older drugs in the class.<\/p>\n

SGLT-2 drugs included Johnson & Johnson\u2019s Invokana, AstraZeneca\u2019s Farxiga, and Jardiance from Boehringer Ingelheim and Eli Lilly. DPP-4 inhibitors included Merck\u2019s Januvia and AstraZeneca\u2019s \u200bOnglyza.<\/p>\n

A separate recent study in the\u00a0Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology<\/a>,\u00a0with more than one million \u200bparticipants worldwide, found significantly higher risks of various subtypes of alopecia with GLP-1 drugs<\/a> than with the commonly used diabetes \u200cdrug metformin<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A third new study suggests GLP-1 users<\/a> face higher alopecia odds with tirzepatide than with semaglutide.<\/p>\n

Researchers at Cambridge, Massachusetts-based analytics firm nference compared 11,046 patients taking tirzepatide with the same number taking semaglutide. <\/p>\n

Rates of new-onset alopecia were 4.24 percent with tirzepatide and 3.33 percent with semaglutide, according to\u00a0a preprint<\/a>\u00a0submitted for peer review.<\/p>\n

A third new study suggests GLP-1 users face higher alopecia odds with tirzepatide than with semaglutide. Kittiphan \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

In female \u200busers of GLP-1 drugs<\/a>, those \u200brates were 5.44 percent with \u2060tirzepatide versus 3.63 percent with semaglutide, the researchers said.<\/p>\n

All three papers say that hair loss often accompanies weight loss and is often reversible.<\/p>\n

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But in the nference study, \u200bthe risk was higher with tirzepatide regardless of how much weight patients lost \u200bor how much \u2060of the drug they received, which suggests that other explanations for hair loss may need to be considered, the researchers said.<\/p>\n

For example, the study also showed that alopecia was more likely in patients with thyroid disease<\/a> or \u2060other \u200bendocrine disorders, which could indicate a connection to baseline hormonal, autoimmune \u200bor dermatologic risk factors, said Venky Soundararajan, who led the nference study.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis supports more individualized counseling and surveillance rather than a generic \u200bmessage that weight loss<\/a> itself inevitably causes hair loss,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"July 22 (Reuters) \u2013 The risk \u200cof hair loss in patients taking GLP-1 drugs for obesity or diabetes,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":783743,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[985,3436,39633,97,243,986,249],"class_list":["post-783742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-medication","tag-diabetes","tag-glp-1","tag-hair-loss","tag-health","tag-medication","tag-obesity","tag-ozempic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783742","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=783742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/783743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=783742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=783742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=783742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}