GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic have swept the world as effective therapies for far more than their original target of diabetes. Widely prescribed and wildly popular, particularly for the unprecedented weight loss they confer, they’ve shown promise in myriad organ systems.
Widespread use of the drugs allows a broader and deeper look at what this class can do — both benefits and risks. A new observational study catalogs 42 ways GLP-1s may help and 19 ways they may harm health.
“We tend to think of drugs sort of like they are surgically designed to do only one thing. But the reality is it’s almost never like this,” Ziyad Al-Aly, a clinical epidemiologist and nephrologist at Washington University in St. Louis, said at a press briefing Thursday. He is the lead author of the study, published Monday in Nature Medicine. “The biology is complex, and that GLP-1 receptor in the body is not only controlling one thing or doing one thing, but has an intricate web of various effects.”
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