Ozempic is a diabetes drug, but it is also often used for weight loss.
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Weight loss and diabetes injections such as Wigovy and Ozempic (both semaglutide) are more widely used than initially thought after studies in mice suggest they act on the brain and reduce inflammation throughout the body. Possible medical benefits.
This finding may explain why this class of drugs appears to reduce heart attacks more than would be expected from weight loss effects alone.
It also supports their use in combating a wide range of health conditions that involve inflammation, including Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, which is being studied in clinical trials.
Semaglutide works by mimicking a gut hormone called GLP-1. Normally released after a meal, GLP-1 reduces appetite, makes you feel full, and triggers the release of insulin, a hormone involved in blood sugar regulation.
Some studies suggest that semaglutide not only reduces weight, but also reduces inflammation, and is a mild increase in certain types of immune system activity.Lowers levels of a compound in the blood called C-reactive protein (CRP) is a well-established sign of inflammation. Daniel Drucker At the University of Toronto, Canada.
A growing body of research suggests that inflammation is involved in many conditions not previously associated with the immune system, such as heart disease and Alzheimer’s disease, but this does not yet lead to new treatments available in the clinic. has not been applied.
Because obesity is also associated with inflammation, semaglutide’s effect on CRP may simply be a side effect of weight loss, rather than the drug itself reducing inflammation.
To find out, Drucker and his colleagues investigated how several GLP-1 mimics affect inflammation in mice. First, they injected bacteria from the mice’s intestines into other parts of their abdomens, causing bacterial infections in their blood. This triggers a strong immune response and causes inflammation.
Some mice were also injected with GLP-1 mimics, either semaglutide or another member of this drug class called exenatide.
GLP-1 mimics reduced the animals’ inflammatory response to infection, but this did not occur when the researchers used mice genetically modified so that their brain cells lacked receptors for GLP-1. Ta.
The researchers also found no reduction in inflammation when they tested genetically normal mice whose brains were injected with compounds that block GLP-1 receptors.
Taken together, these results show that GLP-1 mimetics such as Ozempic act on brain cells to reduce inflammation, and that this is not just a side effect of weight loss.
“Losing weight is good, but you don’t need to lose weight to be effective,” Drucker says. For example, in Wegovy’s recent randomized trial, he says, the drug started preventing heart attacks within the first few months, before people lost significant weight.
“It was known that these drugs acted on inflammation,” he says. Ivan Koichev at Oxford University. “This paper is helpful because it reveals the underlying mechanism.”
In theory, anti-inflammatory drugs could cause people to develop additional infections, but this has so far not been observed in people who received the shots for weight loss or diabetes, Koychev says. .
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Source: www.newscientist.com
