Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic may lower risk of opioid overdoses: study

Novo Nordisk‘s blockbuster diabetes drug Ozempic may decrease the chance of opioid overdoses in certain patients, demonstrating its potential in its place treatment for opioid use disorder, in response to a latest study released Wednesday. 

The energetic ingredient in Ozempic, semaglutide, was related to a “significantly lower” opioid overdose risk than other diabetes medications in people diagnosed with each Type 2 diabetes and opioid use disorder, said the paper published in JAMA Network Open. 

The outcomes suggest that Ozempic could offer potential as a tool for addressing the continued U.S. opioid epidemic, which was declared a public health emergency in 2017. There are currently three effective medications to forestall overdoses from opioid use disorder, but a latest alternative is required because some patients simply don’t use them, said lead study co-author Dr. Rong Xu, a biomedical informatics professor at Case Western Reserve University. 

In 2022, only a couple of quarter of patients with opioid use disorder received beneficial medications for it, and lots of discontinued treatment inside six months, in response to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics says opioids are a think about around 72% of overdose deaths within the U.S. 

The study results also add to mounting evidence that a highly popular class of diabetes and obesity treatments called GLP-1s could have several health advantages beyond regulating blood sugar and promoting weight reduction. Novo Nordisk, its rival Eli Lilly and independent researchers have been racing to review those drugs’ potential in patients with chronic conditions starting from kidney disease and sleep apnea to addictive behaviors equivalent to nicotine and alcohol use.

Within 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 medications between December 2017 and June 2023. The study was not funded by Novo Nordisk. 

Around 3,000 people were prescribed semaglutide injections, while the remaining patients received treatments that ranged from insulins to older GLP-1s for diabetes. That features dulaglutide, the energetic ingredient in Eli Lilly’s drug Trulicity, and liraglutide, which is the energetic ingredient in Novo Nordisk’s Victoza. 

Researchers monitored what number of opioid overdose cases occurred in patients during a one-year period after they stopped treatment with semaglutide or other drugs. For instance, there have been 42 cases of opioid overdose amongst a gaggle of patients that received semaglutide, compared with 97 cases amongst one other group that received insulins, in response to the study. 

That reflects a 58% lower risk of opioid overdose in patients who took semaglutide, Xu said.  

But Xu noted the study has limitations because it relies on data from electronic health records.

More research, specifically clinical trials that randomly assign patients to receive semaglutide or other treatments, is required to verify how much Ozempic and other GLP-1s may also help those with opioid use disorder, in response to the study authors. Those randomized studies may determine whether those treatments are helpful to the final opioid use disorder population or only certain patients with the condition.

“The extent to which GLP-1 medications may benefit treatment of opioid use disorders and help prevent overdoses is unclear,” Dr. Nora Volkow, lead study co-author and director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health, said in a press release to CNBC. “The preliminary findings from this study point to the chance that GLP-1 medications could have value in helping to forestall opioid overdoses.”

Xu added that the researchers plan to review semaglutide in patients with opioid use disorder and obesity.