Popular Weight-Loss Drug Semaglutide Might Help With Alcohol Dependence, Too – By Ed Cara (Gizmodo) / Nov 28, 2023
People with alcohol use disorder who took semaglutide, also known as Wegovy, drank less and had fewer cravings for alcohol, new research found.
A study out this week suggests that semaglutide—the active ingredient in popular obesity drug Wegovy—might be able to help people struggling with alcohol use disorder, too. In a small sample of cases, researchers found evidence that people who took semaglutide for weight loss also experienced a significant reduction in alcohol dependence symptoms. The team and other scientists have begun to conduct clinical trials to further explore this link.
Semaglutide is a synthetic and longer-lasting version of glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1), a hormone that helps regulate our insulin production and appetite, among other things. Developed by Novo Nordisk, it was first approved to manage type 2 diabetes in 2017 under the brand name Ozempic and later approved as the higher-dose formulation Wegovy in 2021 for obesity. Newer GLP-1s like semaglutide and similar drugs have proven to be much more effective at helping people lose weight than diet and exercise alone or past obesity medications (in clinical trials of Wegovy, people have lost around 15% of their baseline weight).
While the primary cells that produce and respond to GLP-1 are found in the gut, there are also GLP-1 related cells in the brain. It’s thought that these drugs work to tamp down appetite not only by physically affecting the digestive tract, such as by slowing digestion, but by interacting with these brain cells as well. And that’s led to speculation that these drugs could reduce people’s cravings for things besides food.
Studies have found that semaglutide can lead to reduced alcohol and drug consumption in lab animals, for instance. And in the wake of the rapid rise in popularity for these drugs, there have been anecdotal reports of people drinking or gambling less often after they began to take semaglutide. But this new study, published Monday in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, seems one of the first to formally document some of these reports.
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