Marianne is a freelance science journalist specializing in health, space, and tech. She particularly likes writing about obesity, neurology, and infectious diseases, but also loves digging into the business of science and tech. Marianne was previously a news editor at The Lancet and Nature Medicine and the U.K.
Weight-loss drugs that work like Ozempic can help users shed pounds. Now, a new study suggests the medications could also help people with alcohol use disorder.
The analysis found that the people using the drugs were less likely to be hospitalized for problems linked to alcohol use disorder, such as intoxication and withdrawal symptoms like delirium, than the patients who weren't using the drugs. Semaglutide use was associated with a 36% lower risk and liraglutide with a 28% lower risk.
The researchers also looked at naltrexone, a drug approved to treat opioid and alcohol use disorder. They found it was associated with a 14% reduction in the risk of hospitalization for issues related to alcohol and substance use. That said, Lähteenvuo emphasized that this kind of study can't conclusively show that the drug directly treated a person's addiction."These are associations, and we need to verify them in clinical trials," he said.
Since then, early research in the lab and some real-world studies have supported this observation. Studies on mice and rats found that semaglutide reduced the rodents' binge drinking episodes and dependence on alcohol, after they'd been provided with alcohol for some time. In addition, some observational studies in humans — including one published Wednesday in the journal JAMA Network Open — have found that GLP-1 agonists were linked to lower alcohol use in people with alcohol addiction.
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