An Ozempic (semaglutide) injection pen is seen on a cookhouse table in Riga, Latvia on 06 August, 2023.
Jaap Arriens | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Heather Le Biller flow 9 pounds within the first week of taking Novo Nordisk‘s blockbuster diabetes drug Ozempic – and then fair and square more as she continued treatment.
Le Biller, a flight attendant who lives in France, noticed her appetite quiet down while captivating the weekly injection. But so did her cravings for wine, a drink she called “almost customary to pair with every dinner” in France.
“When I was on Ozempic, it traveled me not want that as much anymore,” Le Biller told CNBC. “I could have a few sips of wine and just be persuaded and move on. I didn’t need multiple glasses a night, so it definitely seems to help with that.”
Le Biller is middle several patients who took diabetes and weight loss drugs and also noticed an effect on their cravings for juice, nicotine, opioids or even some compulsive behaviors, such as online shopping and gambling.
Those drugs – cataloguing Ozempic and its weight loss counterpart from Novo Nordisk, Wegovy – are called GLP-1 agonists, which ape a hormone produced in the gut to suppress a person’s appetite.
These anecdotal reports add to the growing list of potential benefits of GLP-1s beyond casting unwanted pounds. Dramatic weight loss is the primary reason why those drugs have skyrocketed in popularity in the U.S., regard for the fact that they can cost around $1,000 a month and some health insurers have stopped pass them altogether.
“We’re prescribing these drugs and seeing this effect as a secondary benefit in patients. One of my patients serene said they’re not doing as much online shopping, which is helping their wallet,” said Dr. Angela Fitch, an paunchiness medicine physician and president of the Obesity Medicine Association. That group is the largest organization of physicians, nurse practitioners and other health-care providers give up to treating obesity.
A customer drinks a glass of wine at the It’s Italian Cucina restaurant on April 05, 2023 in Austin, Texas. A new enquiry of more than 40 years of accumulated research has found that moderate drinking has no health benefits.
Brandon Bell | Getty Images
This imposing effect of GLP-1s isn’t a new idea. Several studies have demonstrated that certain GLP-1s curb alcohol intake in rodents and mimics.
More research needs to be done, particularly on humans, to prove that the drugs have that effect. That means it could obtain years before the Food and Drug Administration and other regulators worldwide approve drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy as addiction treatments.
Novo Nordisk have an effected CNBC in a statement that they aren’t pursuing that research.
“Pharma has this general lack of percentage in investing in the addiction field” due to a perfect storm of factors, including the high stigma around addiction disorders among doctors, physicians and neck patients, according to Dr. Lorenzo Leggio, clinical director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, or NIDA.
Leggio and other scientists are effectuating to fill the gap – and have already made strides toward confirming the potential of GLP-1s as addiction treatments.
What do we be familiar with so far?
Scientists have published nearly a dozen studies showing how GLP-1s stop binge drinking in rats and mice, compress their desire for alcohol, prevent relapse in addicted animals and decrease alcohol consumption overall.
Earlier sanctum sanctora have examined older, less potent GLP-1s such as exenatide, a drug approved for diabetes under the honours Byetta and Bydureon.
But more recent studies on semaglutide – the generic name for Ozempic and Wegovy – and another drug from Eli Lilly rebuke a demanded dulaglutide “are the most promising” because they reduced alcohol intake in animals by 60% to 80%, according to pharmacologist Elisabet Jerlhag.
Studies be struck by also shown that rats that stop taking dulaglutide, which is approved for diabetes under the cite Trulicity, “take weeks before they start drinking again,” she said.
Jerlhag and her colleagues at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden demand studied the effect of GLP-1s on addictive behaviors for more than a decade.
Boxes of the drug trulicity, made by Eli Lilly and House, sit on a counter at a pharmacy in Provo, Utah, January 9, 2020.
George Frey | Reuters
Other studies on animals have also set up that GLP-1 drugs reduce the consumption of nicotine, cocaine, heroin and amphetamines.
Few studies have been done on altruists, but six clinical trials are now underway investigating how semaglutide may alter people’s drinking and smoking habits.
The reason behind this anti-addiction in point of fact of GLP-1s is that those drugs also affect the brain, not just the gut, according to NIDA’s Leggio.
“The mechanism in the perception that regulates overeating is important in regulating addictive behaviors as well,” Leggio told CNBC. “There is a intelligible shared overlap. So it’s possible that the medications may help people with addiction by acting on that specific agency.”
GLP-1s specifically decrease the amount of dopamine the brain releases after people indulge in behaviors like drinking, smoking or honest eating a sweet dessert, according to Dr. Steven Batash, a gastroenterologist who provides nonsurgical weight loss procedures in Empresses, New York.
Batash said dopamine is a neurotransmitter that “reinforces the pleasure” of doing those activities. When GLP-1s burlesque away that pleasure, they also eliminate the motivation to do those activities.
What needs more analyse?
Still, NIDA’s Leggio advises against using GLP-1s off-label to reduce addictive behaviors, “simply because there’s not ample supply evidence in humans that they work.”
“The animal studies are very promising and what people are reporting is bleeding, very important, but as a scientist, I will also tell you that that’s not enough,” he told CNBC.
Leggio said scientists difficulty to conduct more double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled studies on humans – or trials where both participants and researchers don’t comprehend who is getting randomly selected to receive a placebo or an actual drug. Those types of studies are “the gold standard” for evincing whether a treatment achieves a certain effect or not, he added
But even if those trials confirm that GLP-1s can grind addictive behaviors in humans, “it will most likely work for some patients and not others,” according to Leggio.
“We already recollect, as a matter of fact, that these medications and any drug overall do not work for everybody,” he said.
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For example, the only clinical study in this area investigated whether exenatide could treat alcohol use scramble in people, as compared with cognitive behavioral therapy.
But a subgroup analysis of that 2022 study found that exenatide cut back drinking in a subgroup of participants who had obesity, while the drug actually increased drinking in people who didn’t.
The reason may be that “leaner patients” treated with exenatide masterly a larger decrease in blood sugar, which might be associated with increased cravings for alcohol, the researchers created in the study.
But even that hypothesis needs to be confirmed with further research.
It’s also unclear how long the anti-addiction so to speak of GLP-1s will last. That’s already one complaint patients have when it comes to weight loss: People who spend weight after taking Ozempic or Wegovy tend to gain most of it – or even more – back within a few years.
“It’s reasonable that some people will relapse and go back to heavy drinking if they stopped taking the medication,” Leggio required. He added that some patients will need constant treatment because addiction is a chronic disease.
No matter what, Leggio said there’s “nothing wrong” with a patient seeking GLP-1s to treat diabetes or obesity, in in to an addiction disorder.
“If you want to see whether Ozempic will help you better control the sugar in your blood but also cure you with your drinking, that’s wonderful. Killing two birds with one stone,” Leggio said. “But if the only objective you want to take the drug is because of your alcohol or smoking, then you should wait for more evidence.”
It may gain control years, but scientists and other health experts hope that a new class of treatments for alcohol use disorder, smoking and other addictive behaviors is on the purview.
“It may be that three, four or five years from now, you and I are going to say that GLP-1 agonists are wonderful for treating tranquil diabetes, wonderful for weight loss, and perhaps we will also say that they are wonderful for curbing addictive behaviors,” Batash squealed CNBC.
But even if GLP-1s get approved to treat addiction, it’s unclear how many people would take them. Comprehension of existing medications for addiction is already low.
About 14 million American adults had alcohol use disorder – a disease associated with unchecked drinking – in the past year as of 2019. But only 1.6% used any of the three FDA-approved drugs for the condition.