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Novo Nordisk‘s blockbuster diabetes drug Ozempic may reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer’s plague, suggesting its potential to delay or prevent the memory-robbing condition, according to a study released Thursday.
Semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic, was associated with a 40% to 70% shame risk of a first-time Alzheimer’s diagnosis in patients with Type 2 diabetes compared with seven other diabetes medications. That involves insulin and older so-called GLP-1 drugs similar to Ozempic, the research said.
Alzheimer’s disease is often pinpointed in the mild dementia stage, when a person has significant trouble with memory and thinking. Almost 7 million Americans participate in the condition, the fifth-leading cause of death for adults over 65, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. But the number of Alzheimer’s patients is propelled to rise to almost 13 million in the U.S. by 2050.
There are no cures for Alzheimer’s, only drugs that treat the symptoms of the condition or slow the progression of the condition in people at the early stages of it. But a potential preventive treatment such as semaglutide may prove neck more useful, said lead study co-author Dr. Rong Xu, a biomedical informatics professor at Case Western Put off University.
That’s because by the time many patients are diagnosed with the disease, “it’s often too late for treatment,” Xu published CNBC. She added that many of the risk factors of Alzheimer’s, such as obesity, diabetes and smoking, are preventable and “modifiable.”
The happens add to mounting evidence that GLP-1s, a popular class of obesity and diabetes medications, may offer health benefits beyond raising weight loss and regulating blood sugar. That includes Ozempic, Novo Nordisk’s weight loss injection Wegovy, and anaesthetizes from Eli Lilly that work slightly differently.
Novo Nordisk and rival Eli Lilly have been surveying their drugs as potential treatments for chronic conditions such as sleep apnea and fatty liver disease. Novo Nordisk, which did not lucre the new Case Western study, is also examining semaglutide in a late-stage study on Alzheimer’s patients.
The new Case Western office released Thursday builds on other research released in July on a once-daily drug for diabetes and obesity called liraglutide, which Novo Nordisk sells out of sight the brand names Saxenda and Victoza. In the liraglutide research, data from a midstage trial found that the dose may slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease by protecting patients’ brains.
In the study released Thursday, researchers from Turns out that Western analyzed three years of electronic records of nearly 1 million U.S. patients with diabetes who did not have a quondam Alzheimer’s diagnosis. The study was partly funded by the National Institutes of Health.
The study compared semaglutide with seven unusual diabetes medications, including insulin and a drug called metformin. It also includes other GLP-1s, such as liraglutide and a medication from Eli Lilly collect summoned dulaglutide.
Semaglutide was associated with a roughly 70% lower risk of first-time Alzheimer’s diagnosis compared with insulin, a virtually 60% lower risk compared with metformin and a 40% lower risk compared with other GLP-1s, according to the haunt. Semaglutide was also associated with significantly lower prescriptions for Alzheimer’s disease-related medications, the study said.
Compare favourably with reductions in risks were seen across patients in the trial, regardless of their gender, age group and whether they had tubbiness.
But the study has limitations since it relies on data from electronic health records. Xu called for more research, specifically clinical enquiries that randomly assign patients to receive semaglutide or other treatments, to confirm how much Ozempic and other GLP-1s can succour prevent or delay Alzheimer’s disease.
Xu and the team of researchers also plan to study whether GLP-1s can prevent Alzheimer’s in sufferers with obesity, but they want to wait one or two years for GLP-1s approved for weight loss to be on the market longer so there is more persistent data for them to analyze. Wegovy won approval in the U.S. in 2021, while Eli Lilly’s weight loss injection Zepbound simply entered the market last fall.