Exenatide

New research from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill found that Novo Nordisk’s weight loss drug may help people curb their alcohol consumption. Results from the small Phase 2 study released Wednesday found that the most significant effects of semaglutide were a decrease in alcohol cravings and the number of drinks consumed on drinking days. There was a non-significant impact on the number of drinks each person consumed on a daily basis. The study, published in JAMA Psychiatry , randomized 48 non-treatment-seeking patients with alcohol use disorder to receive either once-weekly semaglutide or placebo over nine weeks. Those who received Novo’s drug got the lowest dose during the first four weeks and then increased to 0.5 mg per week for weeks five through eight. Some of the treated patients received a final, 1 mg dose during the ninth week. One of the researchers on the study, Klara Klein, has previously consulted for Novo Nordisk. Researchers found that the proportion of patients who were given semaglutide and reported zero heavy drink days “increased significantly” over the two dose phases. But the drug did not appear to alter the proportion of abstinence and drinking days. An even smaller subset of patients that were smoking cigarettes before the study found medication-by-time reductions in cigarettes smoked per day. The findings are a small but substantive step forward for the GLP-1 drugs as treatments for substance abuse disorders. The companies themselves have come around to the prospect after earlier batches of data seemed to suggest their potential. Eli Lilly CEO David Ricks said in December that large studies in patients who suffer from alcohol and drug abuse would begin this year. “I think that’s really the next frontier to make a big difference,” he told the Economic Club of Washington, DC. A medical advisor for the company’s diabetes therapeutic area said the company was strongly considering testing the drugs as treatments for cognitive disorders as well. So far, the hypothesis surrounding the drugs’ potential in the brain has lacked rigorous investigation, with the researchers noting that much of the data come from observational or anecdotal data. The new results advance the potential of GLP-1 therapies beyond their first-generation peers, like exenatide, which wasn’t found to reduce alcohol consumption in a previous randomized study. “Although differences in sample characteristics or study design could contribute to differential evidence for efficacy across these 2 trials, the superior efficacy of semaglutide vs exenatide is likely the simplest interpretation,” the authors wrote.