Weight loss drugs are poised to revolutionize health care by slowing the aging process and by allowing people to live longer and in better health. This is the dramatic message from leading scientists after studies were presented at the European Society of Cardiology conference in London last week.
Research already has found that semaglutide – also known by the brand names Wegovy and Ozempic – reduced the risk of death in people who were obese or overweight and had cardiovascular disease.
But new studies have found that Ozempic has an impact beyond what was originally suggested for the drug. People who took the drug died at a lower rate from all causes, not just cardiovascular causes, researchers discovered.
“Semaglutide has far-reaching benefits beyond what we initially thought,” said Prof Harlan Krumholz of the Yale School of Medicine. “It’s not just about avoiding heart attacks. These are health promoters. It wouldn’t surprise me that improving people’s health in this way actually slows down the aging process.”
The studies were drawn from the Select trial in the US, which studied 17,604 people aged 45 or older who were overweight or obese and had established cardiovascular disease but not diabetes. They received semaglutide or a placebo and were tracked for more than three years.
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A total of 833 participants died during the study, 58% of which were related to cardiovascular causes and 42% from other causes, with infections being the most common cause of death in the latter group. Most importantly, those who took semaglutide were less likely to die from infections than those in the placebo group, while also consistently reducing the risk of adverse cardiovascular outcomes, it was found.
“The strong reduction in non-cardiovascular deaths, and particularly infection deaths, was surprising,” said Benjamin Scirica, a Harvard professor and the lead author of one of the studies. “These findings reinforce that overweight and obesity increase the risk of death from many etiologies that can be addressed with therapies such as semaglutide.”
