Individuals with prescriptions for Ozempic and comparable medication had decrease charges of intoxication and drug overdoses, in keeping with a brand new examine.
5m3photos/Getty Pictures
conceal caption
toggle caption
5m3photos/Getty Pictures
Ozempic, Mounjaro and comparable drugs for Sort 2 diabetes and weight reduction may additionally assist folks fighting dependancy, in keeping with a brand new examine.
Researchers discovered that folks hooked on alcohol who additionally had a prescription for Ozempic or comparable drugs had a 50% decrease charge 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 charge of opioid overdose.
The findings seem this week within the journal Habit.
The affect that these drugs appeared to have on decreasing addictive behaviors was shocking, says Fares Qeadan, an affiliate professor of biostatistics at Loyola College Chicago and the examine’s lead writer.
“Whereas we hypothesized that these drugs may affect cravings and reward-seeking conduct, the noticed discount in extreme outcomes for people with opioid and alcohol use issues suggests a broader, extra protecting impact than anticipated,” Qeadan mentioned in an electronic mail to NPR.
The lively 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 glad after consuming.
Prescriptions for these and comparable drugs have skyrocketed in recent times, and that’s led to rising anecdotal reviews 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 seemed on the well being information of greater than 1.3 million folks with alcohol and substance use issues over an 8-year interval beginning in 2014.
The examine outcomes add to “plenty of promising proof that we would ultimately be capable to 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 Habit Science. He was not concerned within the examine.
During the last decade, a lot of preclinical research in rats and mice have proven that these drugs can scale back alcohol consumption and different addictive behaviors, he says.
Hendershot notes that a number of latest research have checked out affected person information and located hyperlinks between these drugs and a lowered use of well being codes related to addictive conduct.
Researchers have recognized for a few years that the mechanism within the mind that regulates food-seeking behaviors overlaps with the mechanism that regulates why some folks develop dependancy, 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 consider that these drugs are lively within the mind and much like their actions on meals, additionally 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 can also be serving to folks 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 writer Fares Qeadan says the brand new findings ”present an thrilling path for future analysis” into how Ozempic and comparable medication may someday be used as a part of the toolkit for dependancy therapy.
Whereas Hendershot agrees that the medication may ultimately show helpful in treating dependancy, he says it’s too quickly to endorse that sort of off-label use. He notes that the brand new findings had been primarily based on observational information, 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 at the moment are a number of such scientific trials underway, together with one he’s overseeing at NIH, that take a look at how these drugs have an effect on folks’s ingesting and substance use habits.
