Semaglutide, the active ingredient in the popular weight loss drugs Wegovy and Ozempic, can also help people quit smoking. New research published Monday finds evidence that semaglutide can prevent or treat nicotine dependence in people. However, more research is needed to confirm this potential benefit.
Semaglutide and other newer GLP-1 drugs have been shown to Significantly more effective It helps people lose weight more than diet and exercise alone. But scientists at Case Western Reserve University, led by researcher Rong Xu, have been studying the possible effects of semaglutide and similar drugs that go beyond treating weight loss and type 2 diabetes. For example, earlier this month, they published a study that found GLP-1 drugs may be able to reduce the overall risk of obesity-related cancers in people with diabetes. Their new research, publish inside Annals of Internal Medicineexamined the association between semaglutide use and nicotine use disorder.
Researchers analyzed the health records of more than 200,000 people with diabetes after they were newly prescribed one of several antidiabetic drugs, including nearly 6,000 patients who took semaglutide. They found that semaglutide users were significantly less likely to be diagnosed with a tobacco use disorder or receive treatment (i.e., medication or counseling) in the following year. This pattern also held true when the researchers looked only at people who were obese or not obese.
“While there are effective medications to help people quit smoking, not everyone responds to these medications,” Xu, a professor of biomedical informatics at Case Western Reserve University, said in the university’s statement. “Due to high relapse rates, Alternative medicines are needed to help people quit smoking.”
The team’s findings do not by themselves prove that semaglutide and similar drugs can help treat tobacco addiction. But anecdotes and some studies (including one by the same scientist) publish GLP-1 drugs are increasingly thought to curb harmful cravings caused by alcohol and even other vices like gambling. As a result, scientists elsewhere have begun testing semaglutide in clinical trials for treating alcohol use disorders ( Early promising results so far)—nicotine should follow this trend, the authors say. “These findings suggest the need for clinical trials to evaluate the therapeutic potential of semaglutide [tobacco use disorder] treatment,” they wrote in their paper.
From potentially preventing cancer to making our brains sharper later in life, what can semaglutide not do?
