Ozempic shown to reduce drinking in first trial in alcohol-use disorder – CNN
Source: CNN
For years, people taking Ozempic or other drugs in the same class for diabetes and weight loss have noticed the medicines don’t just curb their desire to eat; for some, they also lead them to drink less alcohol.
Now, the first clinical trial – although relatively small and limited in duration – has confirmed it.
A study of 48 people with signs of moderate alcohol-use disorder found that those taking low doses of semaglutide – the generic name of Ozempic – for nine weeks saw significantly greater reductions in how much alcohol they drank, as well as cravings for alcohol, compared with people on a placebo. The results were published Wednesday in the journal JAMA Psychiatry.
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The findings underscore what multiple analyses of real-world use of the so-called GLP-1 medicines, as well as studies in animals, had already hinted at: Ozempic and similar drugs, already incredibly popular, could help reduce risks of overconsuming alcohol, if the results bear out in larger and longer trials.
“We hoped to see a reduction in drinking and craving,” said Dr. Christian Hendershot, director of clinical research at the USC Institute for Addiction Science and the lead author of the study. “What I didn’t expect was the magnitude of the effects looks fairly good … compared to other alcohol-use disorder medications.”
Alcohol-use disorder, or AUD, affects almost 30 million people in the United States, according to the 2023 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, and it’s characterized by having trouble stopping or controlling alcohol use despite negative consequences from it.
And increasingly, health guidance points to consuming less alcohol or abstaining to improve health; last month, former US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued an advisory warning that alcohol raises the risk of at least seven types of cancer, and called for updated health warning labels on alcoholic beverages.
Whether Ozempic and other similar drugs present a new way of treating AUD will depend on larger trials in patients more heavily afflicted by the disorder, experts said, and potentially whether research can yield a better understanding of how the medicines work to reduce drinking.
There are three medicines approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for AUD, but fewer than 2% of people with the disorder receive treatment with them, Hendershot and his co-authors wrote in their paper, noting few people may know about them and that stigma may pose a barrier to treatment.
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One of the medicines, naltrexone, has shown a small effect size on alcohol-use disorder, Hendershot told CNN. The semaglutide trial showed effect sizes “in the medium to large range,” he said, although he urged caution about the results since the trial “was the first to look at this question in a controlled way.”
Semaglutide, sold by Novo Nordisk as Ozempic for type 2 diabetes and Wegovy for obesity, is part of a class of drugs known as GLP-1 receptor agonists, mimicking the hormone GLP-1 to reduce appetite, slow stomach emptying and regulate insulin. Eli Lilly sells the other major drugs in the class, Mounjaro for diabetes and Zepbound for obesity, based on the active ingredient tirzepatide. In addition to GLP-1, they also mimic another hormone called GIP.
The drugs work in both the gut and the brain – which may be the way they could help with AUD, said Dr. Lorenzo Leggio, a physician-scientist at the National Institutes of Health who wasn’t involved in this study.
“More research is needed to understand the mechanism(s) of action of these medications in AUD,” Leggio, who’s published research on semaglutide’s ability to reduce alcohol drinking in animals, wrote in an email to CNN. “Nonetheless, the work done now suggests that mechanisms may include their effect in reducing alcohol craving and in reducing the rewarding effects of alcohol.”
The study, funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and conducted at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Medicine, enrolled people with alcohol-use disorder who weren’t seeking treatment. They reported drinking more than seven drinks in a week, if they were women, or 14 if they were men, within the last month, with two or more heavy drinking episodes, defined as at least four drinks at a time for women or five for men.
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Half received low-dose injections of semaglutide each week and half received a placebo shot. They came in weekly for visits.
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