Drugs for diabetes first, then weight loss, now maybe AUD

Semaglutide (Ozempic, Wegovy), a medication for type 2 diabetes that has also been popular with people trying to lose weight because it decreases appetite, has been shown to reduce the desire to drink, which has raised interest in the use of the drug to treat alcohol use disorder (AUD). A recent study, “Associations of semaglutide with incidence and recurrence of alcohol use disorder in real-world population,” based on 83,825 patients with obesity, has found that these patients reduced their risk of AUD incidence or recurrence by 50%–56%. The study, published in the May issue of Nature Communications, found that consistent reductions were seen for a 12-month period. The findings provide evidence of the potential benefit of these drugs, now commonly called weight-loss drugs, to treat AUD, and the researchers (lead author William Wang, second author Nora D. Volkow, M.D., director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse) have called for clinical trials.