JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
There is new evidence that drugs like Ozempic can reduce a person's risk of addiction. A large study found that people who started taking GLP-1 drugs for weight loss or diabetes were less likely to misuse substances ranging from alcohol to opioids. NPR's Jon Hamilton has more.
JON HAMILTON, BYLINE: When millions of Americans began taking GLP-1 drugs a few years ago, Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly began to get some intriguing reports from patients.
ZIYAD AL-ALY: Dr. So-and-so started me on Ozempic for diabetes or for weight loss, and all of a sudden, I don't care for alcohol anymore, or I stopped smoking.
HAMILTON: Al-Aly is an epidemiologist at WashU Medicine and VA St. Louis Health Care System. He knew that some small studies had suggested that GLP-1 drugs really did help with certain addictions. So he and a team analyzed data on more than 600,000 people in the VA system over a three-year period. All of them had Type 2 diabetes, but Al-Aly says those treated with GLP-1 drugs experienced a welcome side effect.
AL-ALY: They had less risk of developing substance use disorders across several addictive substances, including opioids, cocaine, nicotine, alcohol, cannabis and other substances.
HAMILTON: The risk was about 15- to 20% lower for most of these substances. Al-Aly says the team also looked at a group with a history of addiction. For these people...
AL-ALY: Being on a GLP-1 (ph) reduced the risk of drug-related death, drug overdose, drug-related hospitalization and suicidal attempts.
HAMILTON: Although VA patients are mostly older men, a separate analysis of women and younger men found a similar benefit. Al-Aly says GLP-1 drugs seem to work by reducing the hormone dopamine in what's known as the brain's mesolimbic system.
AL-ALY: That is the center of the brain that is responsible for reward-signaling - motivation, stress - and that is a center that is co-opted or hijacked, if you will, by addiction.
HAMILTON: The results appear in The BMJ, a medical journal. But experts say they want to know more before recommending widespread use of GLP-1 drugs to treat addiction. Dr. Klara (ph) Klein is an endocrinologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
KLARA KLEIN: You have to understand that these are not medicines that have been tested in people who don't have overweight and obesity or don't have Type 2 diabetes.
HAMILTON: Klein says GLP-1 drugs have revolutionized treatment of those conditions. For addiction, though, she's waiting to see results from several large controlled trials. Klein says these studies will show how GLP-1 drugs affect people who have a substance use disorder but are otherwise healthy.
KLEIN: People will likely lose weight. We have to do that safely. It can cause bad GI side effects that could cause complications. So what that means is that we also need to do the bigger trials to understand the populations that can benefit the most.
HAMILTON: Klein says the trials should also start to answer questions like how long people with substance use disorder need to take a GLP-1 drug.
KLEIN: My hope is that we'll figure out ways that a young person that goes on a therapy - that they won't have to be on a medication for the rest of their lives.
HAMILTON: If GLP-1 drugs do pan out, though, the impact could be huge for nearly 50 million Americans with substance use disorder. Dr. Lorenzo Leggio, an addiction expert at the National Institutes of Health, says now there's a different treatment for each sort of addiction.
LORENZO LEGGIO: We have a lot of hope that these medications, if proven to be effective via controlled trials, may be helpful for multiple addictions.
HAMILTON: Leggio says that would make it much simpler to treat the majority of people who have substance use disorders.
LEGGIO: It's rare to see a patient who will only be addicted to one drug as opposed to using multiple drugs at the same time.
HAMILTON: In the future, Leggio says, these people may be treated with a single medication.
Jon Hamilton, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF CLIF SOULO'S "THE WONDERFUL MIND OF A BLACKAMOOR EXPERIENCE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
