GLP-1 based drugs have been found to improve other health outcomes including for heart and liver disease, a new scientific statement says
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B.C. specialists have known for a few years that weight-loss drugs are “transformative” in treating conditions such as heart, kidney and liver diseases, sleep apnea and cancer, says a Vancouver endocrinologist.
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But Dr. Tom Elliott, medical director of B.C. Diabetes, says a new scientific statement released Wednesday by the Endocrine Society provides a high-level endorsement of these drugs to treat conditions beyond weight loss at a time when some physicians are still skeptical about prescribing them.
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“They are good for lowering sugar and lowering weight (and) they also reduce the risk for people who’ve got established heart or kidney disease,” said Elliott. “They reduce the risk of dying and help preserve kidney function. So they’re they’re dramatically effective drugs.”
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GLP-1 is a natural hormone made in the body to help control blood sugar and appetite. GLP-1 agonists are medications, usually injectables, that lower glucose levels to manage a patient’s metabolism.
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Generic, cheaper versions of the GLP-1 drugs Ozempic and Wegovy came on the market in B.C. in May.
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The Endocrine Society’s statement says that physicians prescribing GLP-1-based weight-loss drugs should consider how the treatments can improve their patients’ overall health and reduce the risk of life-threatening conditions, rather than just prescribing them for weight loss.
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At a news conference Wednesday, experts with the society, which identified obesity as a chronic disease in 2013, called the last decade a “new era of weight loss,” and obesity “one of the most pressing, urgent health issues of our time.”
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Semaglutide, tirzepatide and other GLP-1 based therapies have helped specialists better understand obesity, which is also linked to type 2 diabetes, bone health, infertility and more than 13 types of cancer, the experts said.
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Emerging research also shows the drugs may treat or lower the risk for substance-use disorders, arthritis and dementia.
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“It seems silly to ask the question: what should we be measuring beyond weight loss? But we don’t treat people simply to achieve a per cent reduction in body weight,” said lead author Dr. Daniel Drucker of Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto.
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“Yes, that does correlate with improvement of many of the outcomes, but there are a large number of additional outcomes that are very important, that are complementary to assessment of weight loss, and very often we don’t have widely validated tools that are acceptable for measurement of these outcomes.”
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When considering weight-loss drugs, Elliott said, doctors should look at a number of factors, such as family history and risk of cardiovascular disease. “There’s still some skepticism, but for doctors who are in the trenches treating people with obesity and diabetes, and heart disease and kidney disease, this is established practice to use these drugs aggressively,” said Elliott. “If there was skepticism before, there should be much less now in the knowledge of all these other benefits.”
