The anti-obesity drug Ozempic could slow down ageing and has “far-reaching benefits” beyond what was imagined, researchers have suggested.
Multiple studies have found semaglutide (available under the brand names Wegovy and Ozempic) reduced the risk of death in people who were obese or overweight and had cardiovascular disease without diabetes.
Participants who took semaglutide died at a lower rate from all causes, as well from cardiovascular causes and Covid-19, researchers found.
The drug was also found to improve heart failure symptoms.
Responding to research published in JACC, the flagship journal of the American College of Cardiology, Professor Harlan M Krumholz from the Yale School of Medicine, said: “Semaglutide, perhaps by improving cardiometabolic health, has far-reaching benefits beyond what we initially imagined.”
He added: “These ground-breaking medications are poised to revolutionise cardiovascular care and could dramatically enhance cardiovascular health.”
Multiple reports also quoted Professor Krumholz saying: “Is it a fountain of youth?”
He said: “I would say if you’re improving someone’s cardiometabolic health substantially, then you are putting them in a position to live longer and better.
“It’s not just avoiding heart attacks. These are health promoters. It wouldn’t surprise me that improving people’s health this way actually slows down the ageing process.”
The studies, presented at the European Society of Cardiology Conference 2024 in London, were produced from the Select trial which studied 17,604 people aged 45 or older who were overweight or obese and had established cardiovascular disease but not diabetes.
They received 2.4 mg of semaglutide or a placebo and were tracked for more than three years.
A total of 833 participants died during the study with 58% of the deaths were related to cardiovascular causes and 42% from others.
Infection was the most common cause death beyond cardiovascular, but it occurred at a lower rate in the semaglutide group than the placebo group.
People using the weight-loss drug were just as likely to catch Covid-19, but they were less likely to die from it – 2.6% dying among those on semaglutide versus 3.1% on the placebo.
Researchers found women experienced fewer major adverse cardiovascular events, but semaglutide “consistently reduced the risk” of adverse cardiovascular outcomes regardless of sex.
Dr Benjamin Scirica, lead author of one of the studies and a professor of cardiovascular medicine at Harvard Medical School, said: “The robust reduction in non-cardiovascular death, and particularly infections deaths, was surprising and perhaps only detectable because of the Covid-19-related surge in non-cardiovascular deaths.
“These findings reinforce that overweight and obesity increases the risk of death due to many etiologies, which can be modified with potent incretin-based therapies like semaglutide.”
Dr Jeremy Samuel Faust, an emergency medicine physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, praised the researchers for adapting the study to look at Covid-19 when the pandemic started.
He said the findings that the weight-loss drug to reduce Covid-19 mortality rates were “akin to a vaccine against the indirect effects of a pathogen.”
He said: “People with coronary artery disease who had fatal myocardial infarctions precipitated by the physiological stress (or) inflammatory response induced by Covid-19 (or any infection) could have averted those outcomes, were their risk profiles lower when infected.
“By adding documentation of Covid-19 cases and mortality, the Select trial has yielded important insights regarding the epidemiology of COVID-19 and the very nature of infectious disease mortality.”
