Weight-loss drug could reduce heart attack risk by 20%, study finds | Medical research

A weight loss injection could reduce the risk of heart attacks and benefit the cardiovascular health of millions of adults across the UK, a study suggests, in what could be the biggest medical breakthrough since statins.

Participants taking the drug semaglutide, the active ingredient in brands such as Wegovy and Ozempic, were found to have a 20% lower risk of heart attack, stroke or death from cardiovascular disease.

The study, presented at the European Congress on Obesity (ECO) and led by researchers at University College London, also found that semaglutide provided cardiovascular benefits to its participants, regardless of their starting weight or height. amount of weight they had lost. This suggests that people with mild obesity or who have lost only a small amount of weight may have a better cardiovascular outcome.

Professor John Deanfield, director of the National Cardiovascular Outcomes Research Institute and lead author of the study, said the results showed the drug should be routinely prescribed to treat cardiovascular disease and that millions of people at across the UK could take it. medicines over the coming years.

“This fantastic drug is truly a game changer. This (study) suggests that there are potentially alternative mechanisms for improving cardiovascular outcomes with semaglutide beyond weight loss…There is clearly something else going on that benefits the cardiovascular system,” Deanfield said.

The study included 17,604 adults aged 45 and older with a body mass index greater than 27 from 41 countries. The participants, who had also previously suffered a cardiovascular event such as a heart attack, were prescribed either a weekly dose of 2.5 mg of semaglutide or a placebo for an average period of 40 months.

Of the 8,803 patients in the semaglutide group, 569 (6.5%) had a primary cardiovascular event, such as a heart attack, compared to 701 (8%) of the 8,801 patients in the placebo group.

Semaglutide under the brand name Wegovy has been prescribed for weight loss on the NHS since 2023.

Deanfield said that in the 1990s, statins – drugs that lower cholesterol – were considered a medical breakthrough and revolutionary in the treatment of cardiology practice, and he said semaglutide could be considered a revolution similar when it comes to improving cardiovascular health. “We now have a class of drugs that could also transform many of the chronic diseases of aging,” he said.

Professor Jason Halford, president of the European Association for the Study of Obesity, said that as the drug could improve cardiovascular health, it could be economically beneficial to prescribe it on a large scale.

“I think in the next ten years we will see a radical change in the approach to health care,” he said. “Once costs come down, the savings to the NHS will be significant. There are already people at the Treasury who are thinking about the savings that could be generated in the economy thanks to the possibility of increasing productivity. You need to make your workforce as fit as possible.

Around 7.6 million people in the UK live with heart or circulatory disease, according to the British Heart Foundation.

Another study based on the same clinical trial found that participants who received semaglutide lost an average of 10.2% of their body weight and 7.7cm of their waist circumference over a four-year period, while the placebo group lost 1.5% of their body weight and 1.3 cm of their waist circumference. cm from the waist.

A separate study of a new weight-loss vaccine has found it could be much more effective than those already on the market. Retatrutide, a weekly injection, works by suppressing the appetite and also helping the body burn more fat, according to its phase 2 clinical trial.

The trial of 338 participants with obesity showed that participants lost 24% of their body weight over a 48-week period. Researchers say it is more effective for weight loss than Ozempic or Wegovy, which only work by suppressing the appetite.

Professor Naveed Sattar, from the University of Glasgow, who has worked on trials of other weight loss treatments, said: “Five or ten years ago we could never have imagined drugs that would cause this type of weight loss. The trial suggests that retatrutide still hasn’t plateaued, so it will likely cause more weight loss. If we give this drug even longer, I think it could reach almost 30% of a person’s body weight.