A box of Novo Nordisk's Ozempic medicine is seen at a pharmacy in London, Britain, March 8, 2024.
Holly Adams | Reuters
Novo NordiskOzempic, an effective diabetes drug made by the American drugmaker, may reduce the risk of opioid overdoses in some patients, showing its potential as an alternative treatment for opioid use disorder, according to a new study released Wednesday.
The study, published in JAMA Network Open, found that the active ingredient in Ozempic, semaglutide, was associated with a “significantly lower” risk of opioid overdose than other diabetes medications in people diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and opioid use disorder.
The findings suggest that Ozempic could offer potential as a tool to address the ongoing opioid epidemic in the United States, which was declared a public health emergency in 2017. There are currently three effective medications to prevent overdoses from opioid use disorder, but a new alternative is needed because some patients simply don’t use them, said Dr. Rong Xu, co-senior author of the study and professor of biomedical informatics at Case Western Reserve University.
In 2022, about a quarter of people with opioid use disorder received the medications recommended to treat it, and many stopped 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 in about 72% of overdose deaths in the United States.
The study results also add to growing evidence that a 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 competitor Eli Lilly Independent researchers have raced 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 abuse.
In the study released Wednesday, researchers from Case Western Reserve University and the National Institutes of Health analyzed electronic records of about 33,000 patients who were prescribed semaglutide or other diabetes medications between December 2017 and June 2023. The study was not funded by Novo Nordisk.
Doctors have prescribed semaglutide injections to about 3,000 people, while the rest of the patients received treatments ranging from insulin to older GLP-1 inhibitors for diabetes. These include dulaglutide, the active ingredient in Eli Lilly’s Trulicity, and liraglutide, the active ingredient in Novo Nordisk’s Victoza.
The researchers monitored the number of opioid overdoses in patients over a one-year period after they stopped treatment with semaglutide or other drugs. For example, there were 42 opioid overdoses in the group of patients who received semaglutide, compared with 97 in the group who received insulin, according to the study.
This reflects a 58% lower risk of opioid overdose in patients taking semaglutide, Shaw said.
But Shaw noted that the study has limitations because it relies on data from electronic health records.
According to the study authors, more research is needed, particularly clinical trials that randomly assign patients to semaglutide or other treatments, to confirm how well Ozempic and other GLP-1s can help those with opioid use disorder. These randomized studies could also determine whether these treatments are beneficial for the general opioid use disorder population or just some patients with the condition.
“It is unclear how well GLP-1 medications can help treat opioid use disorders and prevent overdoses,” Dr. Nora Volkow, co-senior author of the study and director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health, said in a statement to CNBC. “The preliminary results from this study suggest that GLP-1 medications could be of value in helping prevent opioid overdoses.”
Shaw added that researchers plan to study semaglutide in patients with opioid use disorder and obesity.
