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New research suggests that GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy may help some cancers.
Obese people have a higher risk of developing 13 types of cancer, and the more overweight a person is, the greater the risk. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 40% of new cancer diagnoses are linked to being overweight. By 2021, there were about 170 new diagnoses per 100,000 people, the CDC said. Data It shows.
But a Research Published Friday in the journal JEMA Network Open, people with type 2 diabetes treated with the GLP-1 class of drugs were significantly less likely to be diagnosed with 10 of 13 obesity-related cancers than those treated with insulin.
The risk was cut in half for gallbladder cancer, meningioma, pancreatic cancer and hepatocellular carcinoma, a type of liver cancer. It was also significantly reduced for ovarian cancer, colorectal cancer, multiple myeloma, esophageal cancer, endometrial cancer, and kidney cancer.
Being overweight causes changes in the body such as chronic inflammation and abnormal levels of insulin, insulin-like growth factor and sex hormones that can lead to cancer, according to the CDC. And GLP-1 drugs interact with systems related to insulin production.
The new findings linking GLP-1 treatment to certain cancer risks “compare favorably” with similar results found in other trials associated with intensive lifestyle interventions and metabolic-bariatric surgery, the study authors wrote.
However, the study found that GLP-1 treatment was not associated with a reduced risk of postmenopausal breast cancer, which, according to CDC data, is the most common type of obesity-related cancer.
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There was no reduced risk of stomach cancer or thyroid cancer. In fact, other studies suggest that GLP-1s may interact with the body's insulin production in ways that can negatively affect the thyroid, the study authors suggest, and patients should be aware of the thyroid-related risks included on the drug's packaging.
The new study suggests that the risk of cancer diagnosis in people with type 2 diabetes is not different among those treated with GLP-1 compared to those treated with metformin. In fact, the probability of being diagnosed with kidney cancer was higher among those using GLP-1s than those on metformin.
For this study, researchers from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and Metro Health System analyzed more than ten years of medical records for nearly 1.7 million people with type 2 diabetes.
More data are needed on how the reduction in cancer risk correlates with weight loss, but the findings “provide initial evidence of a cancer-prevention benefit of GLP-1RAs in high-risk individuals and support further preclinical and clinical studies.” The authors of the study wrote.