Taking a new generation of weight-loss medication is linked to a significantly lower risk of addiction and death from drugs such as cocaine and alcohol, a large U.S. study suggested Thursday.
The massively popular drugs known as GLP-1 agonists could even halve people's risk of dying from a range of harmful substances, according to the research published in the BMJ journal.
However outside experts urged caution in interpreting the results, which do not establish a causal link, calling for clinical trials to find out more.
As GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic have transformed the treatment of diabetes and obesity in recent years, they have also shown signs of helping with a surprising variety of health problems, including addiction.
The U.S. team of researchers analyzed the medical records of more than 600,000 people with type 2 diabetes in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs' healthcare database who took either GLP-1s or an older kind of diabetes drug.
The researchers then looked at the effect of drugs including alcohol, cannabis, cocaine, nicotine and opioids over three years.
For veterans who already had a drug addiction, taking GLP-1s had a 50-percent lower rate of death and a 40-percent lower rate of overdose.
Among veterans with no history of drug addiction, taking GLP-1s was linked with a 14-percent lower risk of developing one.
Ziyad Al-Aly, an epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis and the study's senior author, told AFP it was "quite a surprise" how many substance-use disorders the GLP-1s appeared to prevent.
"The effect was not confined to one substance, it was evident across the board for all addictive substances," he told AFP.
