WEIGHT-LOSS JABS CAN CUT ALCOHOL CRAVINGS, STUDY SUGGESTS
Weight-loss jabs can reduce cravings for alcohol and double the number of people who are stopping heavy drinking, a new study suggests.
The drug semaglutide – sold under the brand names Ozempic and Wegovy – was developed to tackle diabetes but is now used widely to tackle obesity.
In recent months it has also been found to help a number of other conditions, such as high blood pressure and heart and kidney disease, and has even been called the “fountain of youth” because it slows down the markers for ageing.
In research hailed as “exciting” by experts, scientists have now shown that it helps problem drinkers to reduce their alcohol intake.
Experts believe it targets the same areas of “craving” in the brain that cause people to overeat, and may be useful in fighting a number of addictions.
In a study of 48 adults with drinking problems, those randomly assigned to receive weekly, low-dose injections of Ozempic for nine weeks reduced their number of drinks each day from an average of just under three to just over one.
Likewise, nearly 40 per cent of people in the semaglutide group reported no heavy drinking days in the last month of treatment, compared with 20 per cent in the placebo group.
“These data suggest the potential of semaglutide and similar drugs to fill an unmet need for the treatment of alcohol use disorder,” said Dr Klara Klein of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, the senior author who carried out the research.
Semaglutide, manufactured by Novo Nordisk, is one of a class of medications that work by mimicking the hormone GLP-1 to repress appetite and make people feel fuller more quickly.
The study also showed that, among a small sub-group of participants who smoked, those treated with semaglutide had significantly greater reductions in the average number of cigarettes smoked each day compared with those in the placebo group.
Commenting on the study, Dr Stephen Burgess, the group leader at the MRC Biostatistics Unit at the University of Cambridge, said: “This is a small study, but an exciting one. It provides evidence that semaglutide treatment can reduce alcohol consumption, similar to how it has been shown to reduce food consumption and consequently body weight.
“The likely mechanistic pathway is by dampening brain cues that prompt an individual to crave both food and alcohol.”
Currently, only patients who are obese or who have Type 2 diabetes can access semaglutide drugs on the health service, but the findings could add more pressure on the NHS to prescribe the drug more widely like statins.
Tens of thousands of people are already obtaining the jabs privately at costs of about £200 a month.
Dr Riccardo De Giorgi, a clinical lecturer at the University of Oxford’s department of psychiatry, said using semaglutide to tackle addictions was one of the “most promising avenues” for future research.
Commenting on the new study, he said: “It represents, at present, the most robust and yet preliminary piece of evidence suggesting that these medications may indeed be useful for the care of people with alcohol use disorder – an extremely disabling condition.”
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Matt Field, a professor of psychology at the University of Sheffield, said: “This study will hopefully serve as a springboard for further research.
“Furthermore, the nature of the semaglutide effect – reducing the amount of alcohol consumed, while having no effect on the number of days that people drank alcohol – is consistent with the idea that semaglutide reduces the reward or pleasure that people get from drinking alcohol, which is why they drink less.
“It will be important to establish if semaglutide can also reduce alcohol consumption in people who are not obese, particularly given that many people who seek treatment for alcohol problems are underweight.”
The new findings were published in the journal Jama Psychiatry.
2025-02-12T18:08:54Z
