The Ozempic debate: Large study reveals the good and the bad

A new study shows that GLP-1 drugs offer health benefits such as reducing risks for heart disease but also carry potential risks like gastrointestinal issues.

Ozempic, Wegovy, Zepbound and other drugs often used for weight loss may help lower the risk of a wide range of health conditions, from diabetes to Alzheimer’s, according to a new study, but they also may come with risks like pancreatitis and stomach paralysis.

The large observational study, published Monday in Nature Medicine, is the first of its kind to map the risks and benefits of drugs like Ozempic across 175 potential health outcomes, according to the authors.

These health outcomes ranged from psychotic disorders, seizures and dementia to gastrointestinal disorders, hypotension and arthritis.

“Given the drugs’ newness and skyrocketing popularity, it is important to systematically examine their effects on all body systems — leaving no stone unturned — to understand what they do and what they don’t do,” said the study’s senior author, Ziyad Al-Aly, a clinical epidemiologist and nephrologist at WashU Medicine in St. Louis, Mo.

“Our approach has allowed us to build a comprehensive atlas mapping the associations of GLP-1RA spanning all organ systems. The study’s results provide insights into some known and previously unrecognized benefits and risks of GLP-1RA that may be useful to inform clinical care and guide research agendas,” he said in a Monday media release.

Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (also known as GLP-1s), including medications like Ozempic, Mounjaro and Zepbound, have gained popularity over the years.

Initially developed to treat Type 2 diabetes, these drugs have become increasingly popular over the past decade for managing diabetes, obesity and other health conditions.

“At a very high level, when you give the drug to somebody, you’re sort of telling the body that it’s just eaten a meal. So the effects that this drug has is that it works on the brain to reduce appetite and to change the craving for food and even other things as this paper shows,” explained Hertzel Gerstein, an endocrinologist and a professor of medicine at McMaster University in Hamilton.