Weight-loss drugs could be used to help people reduce their intake of alcohol, researchers have said, after a study found they can cut cravings and curb heavy drinking.
The medicines, originally developed to treat type 2 diabetes, have revolutionised the treatment of obesity, and evidence suggests they could have benefits in other areas of health, such as reducing risk of heart attacks and strokes.
Now the first clinical trial of its kind has found that semaglutide, distributed under the brand name Wegovy, cut the amount of alcohol people drank by about 40% and dramatically reduced people’s desire to drink. Researchers said the study backed up anecdotal evidence from patients and doctors that semaglutide can lead to a sudden loss of longing for alcoholic drinks.
A key finding was that semaglutide’s effects were bigger than was often seen with existing drugs to curb alcoholism, even though the medicine was only administered at the lowest clinical doses.
The study’s senior author Klara Klein, from the University of North Carolina school of medicine, said: “These data suggest the potential of semaglutide and similar drugs to fill an unmet need for the treatment of alcohol use disorder.
“Larger and longer studies in broader populations are needed to fully understand the safety and efficacy in people with alcohol use disorder, but these initial findings are promising.”
In the research, published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, 48 people with drinking problems were recruited, who had not been actively seeking treatment. They all had alcohol-use disorder, which can include the inability to stop or control drinking despite negative consequences.
Participants were taken to a comfortable lab setting one week before injections and asked to drink their preferred alcoholic drinks over two hours, with instructions to delay drinking if they wished.
They were then randomly assigned to receive weekly, low-dose injections of semaglutide or a placebo for nine weeks, during which time their weekly drinking patterns were also measured.
The semaglutide dose was 0.25mg a week for four weeks, 0.5mg a week for four weeks, and 1.0mg for one week, all given during clinic visits.
Afterwards, everyone returned to the drinking lab to repeat the process and see what had changed. Researchers calculated how much alcohol people had drunk and the alcohol concentration in their breath.
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Semaglutide injections reduced the amount of alcohol people drank in the lab setting, the study found, “with evidence of medium to large effect sizes for grams of alcohol consumed”.
The semaglutide group also saw a 41% reduction in the number of drinks they consumed on each of their drinking days. In addition, weekly alcohol cravings dropped by about 40%, while there were also bigger reductions in heavy drinking over time compared to the placebo group.
Nearly 40% of people in the semaglutide group reported no heavy drinking days in the last month of treatment, compared with 20% in the placebo group.
Dr Stephen Burgess of the University of Cambridge, who was not involved in the study, said: “This is a small study, but an exciting one. It provides evidence that semaglutide treatment can reduce alcohol consumption, similar to how it has been shown to reduce food consumption and consequently body weight. The likely mechanistic pathway is by dampening brain cues that prompt an individual to crave both food and alcohol.”
Prof Sir Ian Gilmore, the chairman of the Alcohol Health Alliance UK, welcomed the study’s findings. He said there was still an urgent need to tackle the affordability, availability and marketing of alcohol, but further research on semaglutide’s mechanism of action might also help to develop understanding of the cause of alcohol dependence.
