Ozempic, Mounjaro and other GLP-1 drugs for diabetes can prevent new substance use disorders and alleviate existing addictions, according to findings from a large study of U.S. military veterans.
The protective effect was seen across a wide variety of addictive and habit-forming substances, including cocaine, opioids, alcohol, nicotine and cannabis, adding further evidence to a phenomenon previously flagged in smaller studies.
“That breadth was quite a surprise,” said Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly of the VA Saint Louis Health Care System in Missouri, who led the study published in The BMJ, opens new tab. “In addiction medicine, there's not a single drug that works across all these substances.”
His team used a U.S. Veterans Affairs database to identify patients with type 2 diabetes treated with drugs from two different classes of medicines: GLP-1s such as Eli Lilly’s (LLY.N), opens new tab Trulicity or Mounjaro, and Novo Nordisk’s (NOVOb.CO), opens new tab Victoza or Ozempic; and SGLT-2 inhibitors such as Jardiance from Boehringer Ingelheim and Farxiga from AstraZeneca (AZN.L), opens new tab. They then compared them in simulated randomized trials.
Read Full Article Here
