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A new study found that popular weight loss and obesity drugs, Ozempic and Wegovy can help people cut back on drinking. The study was published in JAMA Psychiatry on Wednesday. According to a report in NBC News, in a study of around 228,000 people in Sweden who had alcohol use disorder, researchers found that people who were taking a GLP-1 drug like semaglutide were less likely to be hospitalized for alcohol-related issues.

Alex DiFeliceantonio, an assistant professor at Virginia Tech’s Fralin Biomedical Research Institute said, “The pharmacological treatments available for AUD are not very good, and relapse is really common.”

Dr. Markku Lähteenvuo, a psychiatric researcher at Niuvanniemi Hospital in Finland and study leader said, “I see so many patients who do not have good outcomes on the medications we have and who are desperate for help with their addiction. We really do need more tools in the toolbox.”

For this study, Lähteenvuo and his team looked at medical records from 228,000 people in Swedish who were diagnosed with alcohol use disorder from 2006 to 2023. All of the people in the study also had obesity or Type 2 diabetes. The authors also say that 60% of the participants were hospitalized for alcohol use disorder at some point during the study period.

Nearly 75,000 people in the study used some type of medication to treat alcohol use disorder. Among that group, the team documented about 30,000 hospitalisations. The alcohol-related hospitalisations were much lower among people who took a GLP-1 drug.

For the roughly 4,300 people in the study who used semaglutide — the ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy — there were about 220 hospitalizations for alcohol use disorder. Others in the study were taking older GLP-1 drugs, including liraglutide and dulaglutide, and also had fewer hospitalizations.

Using hospitalization to determine the drugs’ effects on alcohol use disorder is an imperfect measure, but experts said it is a good place to start. DiFeliceantonio said, “Alcohol withdrawal or poisoning would be why someone would require hospitalization, which is a pretty extreme outcome.”

She said that hospital data is widely available and it can help researchers determine which drugs may work for different types of addiction and which clinical trials they should run first.

Mounting research shows GLP-1 agonists give a closer look, especially for alcohol addiction. Christian Hendershot, director of clinical research at the University of Southern California Institute for Addiction Science said that the fact that the new study included only people who have alcohol use disorder gives better information about how effective the drugs may be for people with substance addiction.

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