United States: Presently, drugs used to assist in weight loss and diabetes, such as Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, or Zepbound, seem to be useful in fighting alcohol dependency and opioid addiction, a new study shows.
More about the news
Those patients on this class of drugs – glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1) – cut their rate of drinking with alcohol by 50 percent to those who have other addiction disorders not taking the medicine, data reveal show in the Addiction Journal on October 17.
In addition, according to the results of the study, GLP-1 patients have a 40 percent lower risk of opioid overdose.
What more are the experts stating?
According to Fares Qeadan, who is on the research team and an associate professor of biostatistics at Loyola University in Chicago, GLP-1 drugs “exhibited a strong protective association with alcohol intoxication among those with alcohol use disorder,” the US News reported.
“Related prescriptions additionally displayed a strong protective association with opioid overdose among individuals with opioid use disorder,” as stated by the team of researchers.
The GLP-1 drugs induce weight loss since they copy a hormone that is released when one eats. According to the investigators, the drug assists in moderating blood sugar, lowering appetite, and slowing down digestion.
As the researchers mentioned, the brain region targeted by GLP-1 “overlaps with the same processes that are responsible for the development and maintenance of addictive behaviors such as chronic substance use,” US News reported.
To reach their conclusions, the authors of the current study used information on 500,000 individuals with a history of opioid dependence and 817,000 patients with a history of alcohol dependence.
The records were obtained from 136 US health systems, including from January 2014 to September 2022. These people’s use of GLP-1 drugs was also monitored by researchers, together with cases of intoxication and overdose.
As per the researchers, “This study may introduce a promising new treatment for substance use disorders.”