A box of Ozempic manufactured by Novo Nordisk is seen at a pharmacy in London, Britain, March 8, 2024.
Holly Adams | Reuters
Novo NordiskThe blockbuster diabetes drug Ozempic may reduce the risk of opioid overdose in some patients, proving its potential as an alternative treatment for opioid use disorder, according to new study released on Wednesday.
Ozempic’s active ingredient, semaglutide, was associated with a “significantly lower” risk of opioid overdose than other diabetes medications in people diagnosed with both type 2 diabetes and an opioid use disorder, says research published in JAMA Network Open.
The results suggest that Ozempic could offer potential as a tool to treat ongoing US. opioid epidemic, which was declared a public health emergency in 2017. Currently, there are three effective drugs to prevent overdose from opioid use disorder, but a new alternative is needed because some patients simply don’t use them, said lead study co-author Dr. Rong Xuprofessor of biomedical informatics at Case Western Reserve University.
Only in 2022 about a quarter of patients with opioid use disorder received recommended medications for it, and many discontinued treatment within six months, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics says opioids are a factor about 72% of overdose deaths in the US
The study results also add to growing evidence that a wildly popular class of diabetes and obesity treatments called GLP-1s may have many health benefits beyond regulating blood sugar and promoting weight loss. Novo Nordisk, its rival Eli Lilly And independent researchers are racing to study the potential of these drugs in patients with chronic conditions ranging from kidney disease and sleep apnea to addictive behaviors such as nicotine and alcohol use.
In the study released Wednesday, researchers from Case Western Reserve University and the National Institutes of Health analyzed the electronic records of nearly 33,000 patients who were prescribed semaglutide or other diabetes drugs between December 2017 and June 2023. The study was not funded by Novo Nordisk.
About 3,000 people were prescribed semaglutide injections, while the rest received treatments ranging from insulins to older GLP-1s for diabetes. This includes dulaglutide, the active ingredient in Eli Lilly’s drug Trulicity, and liraglutide, which is the active ingredient in Novo Nordisk’s Victoza.
The researchers tracked how many opioid overdoses occurred in patients during a one-year period after they stopped treatment with semaglutide or other drugs. For example, there were 42 cases of opioid overdose among a group of patients receiving semaglutide, compared with 97 cases among another group receiving insulin, according to the study.
This reflects a 58% lower risk of opioid overdose in patients who received semaglutide, Xu said.
But Xu noted that the study has limitations, as it relies on data from electronic health records.
More research, especially clinical trials that randomly assign patients to receive semaglutide or other treatments, is needed to confirm how much Ozempic and other GLP-1s can help people with opioid use disorder, according to the study authors. These randomized studies can also determine whether these treatments are beneficial for the general opioid use disorder population or only for certain patients with the condition.
“The extent to which GLP-1 drugs could benefit the treatment of opioid use disorders and help prevent overdose is unclear,” said Dr. he said in a statement to CNBC. “Preliminary findings from this study suggest the possibility that GLP-1 drugs may have value in preventing opioid overdose.”
Xu added that researchers plan to study semaglutide in patients with opioid use disorder and obesity.
