Weight loss drugs like Ozempic can also help people stop smoking

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Drugs containing semaglutide, like Ozempic and Wegovy, are intended to help people with diabetes lower their blood glucose levels while also reducing the risk of cardiovascular events in patients suffering from various heart issues. However, the active ingredient has another notable side effect. Semaglutide can help people lose weight. That’s the primary reason that these drugs have become so popular in recent years.

Now, a new study indicates that there might be even more benefits to semaglutide than initially believed. Drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy might help people quit smoking, which is the kind of behavioral change doctors will often recommend to patients, especially those who have diabetes and one or more heart conditions.

Researchers from Cleveland and Maryland published their findings in Annals of Internal Medicine. They explain they set out to explore the reduced desire to smoke in patients treated with semaglutide for type 2 diabetes who also had a tobacco use disorder (TUD).

To study the effects of Ozempic and Wegovy on people with diabetes who were also smokers, the researchers compared semaglutide with seven other antidiabetes medications: insulins, metformin, dipeptidyl-peptidase-4 inhibitors, sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 inhibitors, sulfonylureas, thiazolidinediones, and other GLP-1RAs.

The study covered 222,942 participants, 5,967 of which were given semaglutide. All patients were new users of antidiabetic drugs.

The scientists concluded semaglutide “was associated with a significantly lower risk for medical encounters for TUD diagnosis compared with other antidiabetes medications, and was strongest compared with insulins and weakest but statistically significant compared with other GLP-1RAs.”

Also, they found that semaglutide “was associated with reduced smoking cessation medication prescriptions and counseling.”

Moreover, the study says the findings were similar in patients with and without a diagnosis of obesity. That’s a risk factor for developing diabetes.

Finally, the research says the differences started appearing within 30 days of prescribing Ozempic or Wegovy.

These conclusions are certainly interesting, but they’re not definitive. The study indicates there’s potential to study the effects of semaglutide for TUD treatment.

One of the questions future studies will have to address is whether people will pick up smoking once semaglutide is eliminated from their treatment. That would assume Ozempic and Wegovy were given to non-diabetic patients to treat smoking disorders rather than keep blood glucose under control.

As for how semaglutide might reduce the desire to smoke, the answer is quite simple. Drugs like Ozempic reduce the surge of dopamine a person might experience after things that make them feel good.

“What happens is, when you do a certain activity, dopamine surges – and you’re like, ‘Oh, I want to keep doing that,’ whether that’s indulging in alcohol, nicotine or even gambling,” Dr. Tamika Henry told CBSNews about a year before the new study was released. “How Ozempic works is, it decreases the surge of dopamine, and therefore the desire for that particular activity is decreased.”

As Henry also observed, studies will have to determine whether any negative side effects are worth an addiction treatment with semaglutide.