November 30, 2023
Steffen Trumpf/dpa; Sipa USA
Wegovy, the weight loss drug used to treat people with obesity, is being studied as a possible medication for alcohol addiction.
Wegovy and Ozempic may be helpful in treating people with alcohol addiction and other addictive disorders, according to new research on the medications.
The medications are commonly used for weight loss because they contain semaglutide, a drug that increases the body's insulin levels and lowers blood sugar levels. Semaglutide also targets signals to the brain that are responsible for regulating appetite. It helps people feel fuller after they eat and experience few cravings.
Semaglutide works to curb alcohol addiction, too, according to the new study – the first to demonstrate this finding in people. Previous studies had found the drug decreased alcohol and drug consumption in rodents and monkeys.
Researchers at the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University followed six patients with alcohol addiction who were already taking Wegovy as a weight loss treatment. They all showed significant reductions in alcohol consumption and addiction symptoms.
One patient who previously would drink a case of beer in a matter of hours reported losing his cravings and cutting back on drinking after starting the drug, lead study author Jesse Richards, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Oklahoma, told Tulsa World. She said the study was partly inspired by anecdotal evidence from people who take the semaglutide.
Only small doses of semaglutide were needed to produce the results tied to alcohol addiction, researchers found. Wegovy is administered with an injection pen. It's available at various doses and is taken once a week by weight-loss patients.
The Oklahoma research is part of an initiative known as the Semaglutide Therapy for Alcohol Reduction study. There's currently a sister study in Baltimore being led by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, which seeks to replicate the results from Oklahoma.
"We're still in the process of finding out whether it's effective or not, but replication is a key step in making any breakthrough accessible to patients," said researcher Kyle Simmons, a professor at Oklahoma State University's Center for Health Sciences. "It's exciting that different research teams are studying the same medication because they can pool their findings to get a more comprehensive understanding of its effects."
The studies on semaglutide for alcohol addiction also aim to determine whether the drug impacts other reward responses in the brain aside from the desire to eat.
"There's a concern that semaglutide might not only reduce the desire for harmful substances like alcohol but also affect other rewarding behaviors, potentially leading to anhedonia, a loss of interest in pleasure," Simmons said. "It's extremely important that we figure that out because that helps us to understand who this medication would be safe for and who it wouldn't. This is an important aspect to study, especially in people with a history of conditions like major depressive disorder. We're also being very careful to measure changes in mood and anxiety."
For now, the researchers have urged people not to start pursuing Wegovy and Ozempic off-label to treat alcohol addiction. They're part of a class of drugs called GLP-1 agonists, which haven't been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for addiction disorders. Regulators already have become wary of some of the aggressive weight loss marketing for both drugs, which are often costly and tend to lose their effectiveness when they are no longer taken. Manufacturers also have struggled to meet high demand for the drugs.
Wegovy has been approved as a weight-loss drug for certain patients with obesity. Ozempic has been approved as a diabetes medication but is commonly used off-label as a weight-loss medication.
Simmons said people should talk to their doctors to consider the best available treatments for alcohol addiction. In addition to support groups and individual therapy, there are FDA-approved drugs with proven histories that people can seek.
"If patients are struggling with alcohol use disorder and they want treatment for it, there are good treatments, and they can reach out to their care provider to access those treatments, and they really should be accessing those FDA-approved treatments," Simmons said.
