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• Posted July 30, 2024

Ozempic's Latest Role: Helping Smokers Quit

Smokers with diabetes or obesity who take semaglutide (Ozempic/Wegovy) might reap an added benefit: Help in quitting smoking.

A yearlong study found that, compared to people using other diabetes drugs, fewer patients who were taking semaglutide sought out medical help to quit smoking.

That suggests the drug might have already been helping them to quit, researchers noted.

The finding wasn't a complete surprise to researchers at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), since "clinical anecdotes that patients treated with semaglutide ... [have] reported reduced desire to smoke" have already been widespread, they said.

The new study was published July 29 in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

How might semaglutide cut down on smoking?

The researchers noted these drugs (along with Mounjaro and Zepbound) are glucagon-like peptide receptor agonists (GLP-1s), which work to suppress appetite by targeting specific receptors in the brain.

Studies in mice have shown that GLP-1s also reduce "nicotine-induced increases in dopamine release" in a specific brain area, "a common mechanism underlying the rewarding effects of addictive drugs," the researchers explained.

The new study was led by NIDA director Dr. Nora Volkow. Her team analyzed data from seven trials, all involving smokers who also had type 2 diabetes.

Almost 223,000 patients were tracked for a year, and they took a variety of diabetes meds, including insulin, metformin and sulfonylureas, among others.

A total of 5,967 of the patients took semaglutide.

Volkow's team looked at the uptake of quit-smoking therapies -- a marker for folks who felt they needed help to quit smoking.

The researchers found that patients taking semaglutide were 32% less likely to seek out such therapies compared to those who took insulin, 24% less likely to do so compared to folks taking sulfonyureas, and 18% less likely compared to folks taking metformin.

Smokers in the study who took semaglutide were only slightly less likely (12%) to need quit-smoking therapies compared to folks who took the other GLP-1 drug tirzepatide (Mounjaro/Zepbound), the team noted.

Volkow's team stressed these results come from a retrospective look at data, and no one is suggesting that doctors start prescribing GLP-1s to help smokers quit at this point in time.

The findings are intriguing, however, and "need to be examined in randomized, clinical trials," the researchers concluded.

This isn't the first time that GLP-1s have appeared to curb addictive behaviors.

Earlier this month, researchers at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine reported that people taking semaglutide had 50% to 56% decreased odds for either becoming alcoholic or relapsing into alcoholism.

More information

Find out more about how GLP-1 meds work at the Cleveland Clinic.

SOURCE: Annals of Internal Medicine, July 29, 2024