Some new research is out about that category of drugs which at times seems to be a class of pharmaceuticals that singlehandedly could solve half the world’s ills , at least for rich folks who can afford it - GLP-1s.
The new paper by Scirica et al. concerns a randomised controlled trial where researchers provided Semaglutide (aka Wegovy) to patients with overweight or obesity with a view to learning whether it helped prevent cardiovascular (“CV”) problems, including CV-related death.
The drug didn’t seem to do anything to alter the rate at which participants caught Covid-19. But, for those that did catch Covid, it helped prevent them from suffering from serious adverse events - including death - from it when they did.
Semaglutide did not reduce incident COVID-19; however, among participants who developed COVID-19, fewer participants treated with semaglutide had COVID-19–related serious adverse events (232 vs 277; P = 0.04) or died of COVID-19 (43 vs 65; HR: 0.66; 95% CI: 0.44-0.96).
The study reports that it isn’t only deaths from Covid that decreased - they saw lower rates in terms of all-cause deaths - a reduction of 19% - as well as both cardiovascular and non-cardiovascular related deaths when broken down in that way.
Participants assigned to semaglutide vs placebo had lower rates of all-cause death (HR: 0.81; 95% CI: 0.71-0.93), CV death (HR: 0.85; 95% CI: 0.71-1.01), and non-CV death (HR: 0.77; 95% CI: 0.62-0.95).
Of course no study is perfect, so it’s worth reading the full thing to understand some of the limitations. But it is nonetheless a result that was described as “stunning” by Dr Faust, who wrote an editorial in the same issue of the journal.
Having obesity is a risk factor for suffering greatly or dying from Covid, so this is a group of participants who were more vulnerable to the disease in the first place; albeit it’s not a small group; over two-thirds of American adults live with overweight or obesity.
As far as I can tell the jury is out as to whether it was solely the weight loss associated with this drug that provided protection from Covid’s worst effects - the participants who used this drug did lose 5kg more weight than the others on average 1 year in - or whether there is some other mechanism at play. Doctors Maron and Faust, as quoted in the NYT, think there’s potentially something else going on as well, potentially around the drugs leading to a reduction in chronic inflammation.
I continue to believe that the irrational efforts some people seem to think we should go to to prevent people who could benefit from these drugs actually getting them is nothing short of deadly in some cases. Treating obesity can save lives.