July 30, 2024 – Drugs for diabetes and weight loss like Ozempic and Wegovy show promise in helping people quit smoking, offering a surprising extra benefit for users.
Compared to people who took other anti-diabetes drugs, like insulin, those who took semaglutide (the active ingredient in Ozempic) were up to 32% less likely to have medical visits that have to do with tobacco use disorder, according to results published Tuesday in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine. Tobacco use disorder is the scientific term for a pattern of tobacco use that indicates dependence or addiction.
For the study, researchers analyzed electronic health records of about 6,000 people with type 2 diabetes taking semaglutide, which is marketed under the brand name Ozempic to treat type 2 diabetes, and under the name Wegovy for overweight and obesity-related conditions. To gauge semaglutide’s impact on tobacco addiction, the researchers looked at whether people were diagnosed with tobacco use disorder during medical visits, were prescribed medication for smoking cessation, or whether they were referred to smoking cessation counseling.
Besides being less likely to have a medical appointment related to a tobacco use disorder diagnosis, people taking semaglutide were also less likely than those on other anti-diabetes medicines to be prescribed smoking cessation drugs or to be referred for smoking cessation counseling.
People with and without obesity appeared to have the benefits similarly.
All of the people in the study newly began taking semaglutide between December 2017 and March 2023, and had not used any other anti-diabetes medicines in the year before starting semaglutide. The greatest effects were seen within 30 days of people starting semaglutide, but they continued for about 180 days, after which they typically plateaued.
The researchers decided to examine the topic after numerous reports of people taking the medicine saying they had less desire to smoke.
The findings are limited in that it was an observational study of people’s health care information and doesn’t reflect actual tobacco usage, cravings, or whether people quit smoking. Quitting smoking is also often linked to weight gain.
But the authors noted that their findings are important because smoking is the top preventable cause of early death and contributes to some of the most of common diseases in the world, like heart disease and cancer. Nearly 12% of U.S. adults smoke.
The reason that drugs like semaglutide may help people quit smoking is unclear, the authors wrote, but early research points toward the drug’s impact on the brain’s reward system. Other recent studies have linked semaglutide with benefits for people with alcohol use disorder and for people with cannabis use disorder.
Further study of the impact of semaglutide on tobacco use is warranted using more rigorous randomized controlled trials, the authors said, noting that these latest findings are not concrete enough to justify off-label use of semaglutide to help people quit smoking.
