Popular Weight Loss Drug Shows Promise for Smoking Cessation

A new study has found that for people with type 2 diabetes, new use of semaglutide – which is also a popular weight loss drug – was linked with a lower risk of needing medical care for tobacco use disorder (TUD).

The study is published in Annals of Internal Medicine.

Semaglutide use continues to rise

Semaglutide is a drug that has been steadily growing in popularity, marketed as Wegovy® for weight loss and Ozempic® for type 2 diabetes treatment.

Emerging evidence suggests that semaglutide and other drugs in the same class – known as glucagon-like peptide receptor agonists (GLP1-RAs) – may have benefits for other conditions. For example, reducing the risk of dementia in older diabetes patients or lowering the incidence of alcohol use disorder.

Some semaglutide-treated patients have reported a reduced desire to smoke – something that researchers from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health and Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine wanted to investigate further.

Semaglutide lowers the risk of requiring smoking-related healthcare

The researchers analyzed the effectiveness of semaglutide against seven other anti-diabetes medications, including other GLP1-RAs. The study examined over 220,000 new users of anti-diabetes medications, including almost 6,000 new users of semaglutide.

They looked at their effect on TUD-related health measures in three patient populations: those with TUD and type 2 diabetes and those with TUD and type 2 diabetes with and without a diagnosis of obesity.

The findings indicate that semaglutide was associated with a lower risk of utilizing smoking-related healthcare, including smoking cessation measures such as medication prescriptions and counseling.

Similar effects were observed in the groups with and without a diagnosis of obesity. Additionally, semaglutide had the strongest association with a significantly lower risk for medical encounters for TUD diagnosis compared with insulins, and had the weakest but still statistically significant association when compared with other GLP-1RAs.

Further clinical trials required

“Smoking is still a global health problem, and it is therefore interesting to read the findings of this study which examined potential correlations between the prescription of semaglutide and people visiting their doctors for reasons related to tobacco use,” said Rachel Richardson, methods support unit manager at Cochrane, who was not involved in the study.

However, while the findings only suggest that semaglutide could be beneficial for smoking cessation, the study is not able to prove causation and should not be used to support off-label use of semaglutide before additional studies are carried out.

“The nature of the study design means that its findings would need to be examined in large randomized controlled trials before we could conclude that semaglutide might have an impact on smoking cessation,” Richardson added.

“The authors acknowledge a key limitation of their work: a reduction in medical encounters related to tobacco may indicate that people are reducing their use of tobacco, but could also mean that they are less willing to seek help to quit smoking.”

Reference: Wang W, Volkow ND, Berger NA, Davis PB, Kaelber DC, Xu R. Association of semaglutide with tobacco use disorder in patients with type 2 diabetes. Ann Intern Med. 2024. doi:10.7326/M23-2718