Shane O'Mara

Shane O'Mara

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The onward march of semaglutide and friends
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The onward march of semaglutide and friends

Diabetes drugs (also seem to) prevent overdoses - alcohol and opioids

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Shane O'Mara
Oct 22, 2024
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Shane O'Mara
Shane O'Mara
The onward march of semaglutide and friends
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TL,DR

  • A major new study has exciting, albeit correlational, findings about how drugs developed for metabolic disorders might find novel applications for substance use disorders (alcohol, opiates).

  • Medications typically prescribed for managing type 2 diabetes and obesity, such as GIP and GLP-1 receptor agonists, appear to have unexpected benefits in reducing opioid overdoses and alcohol intoxication.

  • The potential benefits of these drugs are therefore not confined to a single health condition, but extend into broader physiological and systemic effects - ones sufficiently far-reaching that they are likely to dramatically reshape treatment for substance use disorders.

    onward march of semaglutide and friends

The new GLP1 weight loss drugs

The arguments favouring the new GLP-1 drugs (and their friends) as broad-spectrum treatments for a wide variety of health conditions continue to gather strength as new data sources confirm early indications that these drugs seem to reduce drug cravings.

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Great article in Nature: Why do obesity drugs seem to treat so many other ailments? From alcoholism to Parkinson’s, scientists are studying the mechanisms behind the broad clinical potential of weight-loss drugs.

I’ve been keeping a very close eye on this literature. Here are some recent pieces:

  • The GLP1 weight loss drugs offering new hope for Parkinson’s treatment

    Beyond diabetes: Exploring lixisenatide’s neuroprotective effects; some thoughts on why evolution has not finely tuned our GLP 1 system

  • Altered states: Navigating the hunger game (Part one) - Semaglutide's role in appetite regulation

  • Altered States: Rewiring cravings (Part two) - Semaglutide's potential impact on substance use disorders and brain plasticity

  • Altered States: transformative potential of the new weight-loss drugs - twenty-two empirical predictions (part three) - The new weight-loss drugs have the potential to be personally, socially, and economically transformative

  • A new medication effective for weight loss

Diabetes Meds Reduce Overdose Risk

A new study has investigated if the new generation of weight loss/diabetes medications reduce the likelihood of overdoses and alcohol use disorder in patients diagnosed with opioid use disorder (OUD) and alcohol use disorder (AUD)1. The researchers examined if these drugs - typically used to manage type 2 diabetes and obesity - could reduce the risks associated with substance use disorders (opioid overdose and alcohol intoxication).

The study was a retrospective cohort analysis using data from over 136 U.S. health systems, including over 500,000 patients with OUD and more than 800,000 patients with AUD.

(Lots more below the fold: subscribe for access.)

Findings

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