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Injections that reduce weight and treat diabetes could also cut the risk of dying from substance-use disorders.<\/span>Credit: Jill Connelly\/Bloomberg\/Getty<\/span><\/p>\n Blockbuster GLP-1 medications might help people to avoid becoming addicted to drugs, including alcohol, cocaine and opioids, a massive study1 suggests. It also found that, for those already dealing with addiction, the treatments are linked to a 50% reduction in the risk of dying from substance abuse.<\/p>\n The findings, published today in The BMJ, come from an analysis of electronic health records from more than 600,000 people in the database of the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), which provides care for millions of military veterans. The study is the latest suggesting that GLP-1 drugs \u2014 which mimic a hormone called glucagon-like peptide 1 and are mainly prescribed to treat obesity and type 2 diabetes \u2014 can also play a part in curbing addiction.<\/p>\n Why do obesity drugs seem to treat so many other ailments?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The study\u2019s large number of participants is unique and allowed researchers to evaluate the effect of GLP-1 drugs on the risk of several substance-use disorders. \u201cThe consistency of effect across multiple substances, which have different mechanisms of action, was quite a revelation,\u201d says Ziyad Al-Aly, a co-author and a clinical epidemiologist the VA St Louis Health Care System in Missouri.<\/p>\n The observational study confirms what physicians are seeing in their clinics and the results of some small clinical trials2. But larger clinical trials are still needed to demonstrate whether the drugs could truly help people with substance-use disorders, specialists say.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have our patients telling us, \u2018I don\u2019t feel like I want to smoke anymore. I don\u2019t really have the interest in drinking anymore,\u2019\u201d says Daniel Drucker, an endocrinologist at the University of Toronto in Canada. \u201cThere\u2019s no question this is real and there are responders. But, so far, we don\u2019t have a really robust, randomized, controlled clinical trial.\u201d<\/p>\n Intrigued by peoples\u2019 reports of reduced alcohol cravings while taking GLP-1 drugs, Al-Aly turned to the VA\u2019s database of electronic health records. \u201cIt\u2019s a colossal data system and it creates a great opportunity,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Al-Aly and his colleagues used the database to compare two groups of people with type 2 diabetes: the treatment group, which had been prescribed GLP-1 drugs, and the control group, which had been prescribed a different class of diabetes medication, called sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 (SGLT-2). They were followed for up to three years after they began taking either medication.<\/p>\n Anti-obesity drug has life-changing benefits for arthritis<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Among the GLP-1 users with no history of addiction, the risk of developing a substance-use disorder over the three-year period was 18% lower for alcohol, 14% lower for cannabis, 20% lower for cocaine, 20% lower for nicotine and 25% lower for opioids than among those in the control group.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Injections that reduce weight and treat diabetes could also cut the risk of dying from substance-use disorders.Credit: Jill Connelly\/Bloomberg\/Getty Blockbuster GLP-1 medications might help people to avoid becoming addicted to drugs, including alcohol, cocaine and opioids, a massive study1 suggests. It also found that, for those already dealing with addiction, the treatments are linked to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45894,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[3151,542,834,3384,933,8847,188,4339],"class_list":{"0":"post-45893","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-addiction","9":"tag-drugs","10":"tag-hints","11":"tag-huge","12":"tag-obesity","13":"tag-promise","14":"tag-study","15":"tag-treat"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/45894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Treasury of data<\/h2>\n