GLP-1 Medicine Like Ozempic Scale back Cocaine Cravings, Case Examine Finds

Semaglutide, the energetic ingredient in fashionable medication Ozempic and Wegovy, can also assist individuals wean themselves off cocaine. A brand new case paper this week particulars a person whose cravings for cocaine considerably declined after he began taking semaglutide.

Physician Vincenzo Maria Romeo wrote concerning the case, published Monday within the Journal of Medical Case Studies. Romeo’s affected person, a 54-year-old man residing in Italy, suffered from cocaine use dysfunction and weight problems, each of which had been handled efficiently as soon as he started taking semaglutide. The findings additional bolster the concept that this class of medicine will also be used to scale back individuals’s unhealthy dependence on medication like cocaine and alcohol.

Semaglutide and different newer GLP-1 medication are identified to be far more effective at serving to individuals drop pounds or treating their kind 2 diabetes than weight loss program and train alone. Since their arrival, some docs have begun to note one other doable however optimistic facet impact of GLP-1 remedy: a few of their sufferers have reported a declining urge to abuse leisure medication or take pleasure in different doubtlessly dangerous compulsive behaviors like playing or binge ingesting.

Research of this phenomenon have largely centered on alcohol and opioids. However when Romeo’s affected person visited him with a historical past of cocaine abuse and weight problems, he and his scientific crew noticed a really perfect alternative to see whether or not semaglutide might alleviate each situations directly. Along with his affected person’s consent, Romeo began him on a 12-week course of the GLP-1 drug.

By the top of the 12 weeks, the person had misplaced round 12% of his physique weight, consistent with typical outcomes (10% to fifteen% common weight reduction in trials). However he additionally skilled a 59% discount in his signs of cocaine craving, based mostly on a generally used survey measurement. All in all, the person reported improved bodily well being, together with feeling extra energetic and having much less joint ache, with solely delicate adversarial results like gastrointestinal signs early on in remedy (a typical incidence with GLP-1 medication).

That is, after all, solely a single case research. Total, the analysis wanting into GLP-1 remedy for substance use issues can also be very preliminary. Researchers aren’t precisely positive how GLP-1 medication scale back cravings for substances and compulsive behaviors, although it’s suspected that GLP-1 receptors within the mind assist regulate our response to doubtlessly addictive stimuli.

However the proof for this unintended impact being real is building. Simply final week, researchers published findings from the primary managed scientific trial testing semaglutide for alcohol dependence; it discovered that folks with average alcohol use dysfunction taking low-dose semaglutide skilled a considerably larger drop in cravings and drinks consumed than these on a placebo.

It would take extra time and analysis to verify the worth of GLP-1 remedy for drug dependence, together with research wanting straight at cocaine abuse. However for individuals like Romeo’s affected person, experiencing weight problems and a substance use dysfunction on the identical time, semaglutide might very properly be established as a potent remedy for each situations within the close to future.

“The findings recommend that semaglutide could also be a promising therapeutic possibility for the administration of substance abuse in sufferers with comorbid weight problems,” Romeo wrote.