Folks with prescriptions for Ozempic and comparable medication had decrease charges of intoxication and drug overdoses, in accordance with a brand new examine.
5m3photos/Getty Photos
disguise caption
toggle caption
5m3photos/Getty Photos
Ozempic, Mounjaro and comparable drugs for Kind 2 diabetes and weight reduction might additionally assist individuals battling habit, in accordance with a brand new examine.
Researchers discovered that individuals hooked on alcohol who additionally had a prescription for Ozempic or comparable drugs had a 50% decrease fee of binging on alcohol, in comparison with individuals who weren’t on the drugs. And other people with opioid use dysfunction who had been taking the drugs had a 40% decrease fee of opioid overdose.
The findings seem this week within the journal Dependancy.
The influence that these drugs appeared to have on decreasing addictive behaviors was stunning, says Fares Qeadan, an affiliate professor of biostatistics at Loyola College Chicago and the examine’s lead creator.
“Whereas we hypothesized that these drugs may influence cravings and reward-seeking conduct, the noticed discount in extreme outcomes for people with opioid and alcohol use problems suggests a broader, extra protecting impact than anticipated,” Qeadan mentioned in an e-mail to NPR.
The energetic components in Ozempic (semaglutide) and Mounjaro (tirzepatide) each work by mimicking hormones within the physique that assist regulate blood sugar and make you’re feeling happy after consuming.
Prescriptions for these and comparable drugs have skyrocketed in recent times, and that’s led to rising anecdotal studies that the medication can curb not simply cravings for meals, but in addition for alcohol and different addictive behaviors.
To conduct the examine, researchers from Loyola College Chicago appeared on the well being data of greater than 1.3 million individuals with alcohol and substance use problems over an 8-year interval beginning in 2014.
The examine outcomes add to “a whole lot of promising proof that we would finally be capable of make the most of these remedies for substance use dysfunction,” says Christian Hendershot, director of scientific analysis on the College of Southern California Institute for Dependancy Science. He was not concerned within the examine.
Over the past decade, a lot of preclinical research in rats and mice have proven that these drugs can cut back alcohol consumption and different addictive behaviors, he says.
Hendershot notes that a number of latest research have checked out affected person data and located hyperlinks between these drugs and a diminished use of well being codes related to addictive conduct.
Researchers have identified for a few years that the mechanism within the mind that regulates food-seeking behaviors overlaps with the mechanism that regulates why some individuals develop habit, says Dr. Lorenzo Leggio, the scientific director of the Nationwide Institute of Drug Abuse.
Scientists nonetheless don’t know precisely how Ozempic and comparable drugs work, he provides. “We imagine that these drugs are energetic within the mind and much like their actions on meals, in addition they curb their yearning for addictive medication,” Leggio says.
Hendershot notes that these drugs are extremely efficient at inducing satiety and that’s why they work for weight reduction. Researchers suspect that satiety sign may additionally be serving to individuals lower substance use as soon as they begin these drugs, he says.
“One other potential mechanism is that these drugs have a tendency to scale back the reward worth or hedonic worth of extremely palatable meals and addictive medication,” Hendershot explains.
Examine creator Fares Qeadan says the brand new findings ”present an thrilling route for future analysis” into how Ozempic and comparable medication might sooner or later be used as a part of the toolkit for habit remedy.
Whereas Hendershot agrees that the medication may finally show helpful in treating habit, he says it’s too quickly to endorse that form of off-label use. He notes that the brand new findings had been based mostly on observational knowledge, to allow them to’t show trigger and impact. He says first, we’d like extra analysis from rigorously carried out, randomized-controlled scientific trials.
Leggio says the excellent news is that there are actually a number of such scientific trials underway, together with one he’s overseeing at NIH, that have a look at how these drugs have an effect on individuals’s consuming and substance use habits.
