Anecdotes are everywhere. People who take weight loss drugs find that it’s not just hunger that causes them to lose their appetite.
Eli Lilly CEO David Ricks plans to test next year whether the company’s GLP-1 drug tirzepatide (also known as Munjaro for diabetes and Zepbound for weight loss) can help treat alcoholism. said David Ricks, CEO of Eli Lilly. , nicotine, and “other things we don’t think are related to weight.”
In comments made in December, Ricks said these drugs could be “anti-hedonic drugs.” This means preventing people from seeking pleasure through things like food, alcohol, and drugs. A study this year that mined digital health records found that people addicted to opioids are about half as likely to overdose if they take the drug.
sleep apnea syndrome
The idea goes back a long way, including a 2015 case study of a 260-pound man with diabetes and sleep apnea. When he took a drug called liraglutide, doctors noticed that his sleep improved.
With sleep apnea, a person gasps for air at night, which is uncomfortable and can lead to health problems over time. This year, Eli Lilly published a study in the New England Journal of Medicine on its drug tirzepatide, which found that breathing interruptions were reduced by 50% in overweight patients with sleep apnea.
longevity
This year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Wigovy as a cardiovascular drug after researchers showed it may reduce heart attacks and strokes in overweight people.
But that wasn’t all. The study of 17,000 people found that the drug reduced the overall chance that someone would die from any cause (known as “all-cause mortality”) by 19%.
Older researchers are now paying attention to this issue. This year, they named Wegovy and similar drugs among the top four candidates for common life-prolonging drugs.