- As the popularity of GLP-1 receptor agonists for weight loss continues to grow, researchers continue to examine how these medications might impact other areas of a person’s health.
- In 2023, published research findings reported that semaglutide could potentially reduce a person’s risk for heart attack, stroke, and major cardiac events by 20%.
- Building off this research, a new study offers further evidence of semaglutide and lowered major cardiac event risk, regardless of how much weight a person loses while taking the GLP-1 medication.
As the popularity of
“GLP-1 receptor agonists are being shown to benefit many chronic diseases over and above their effect on weight,” John Deanfield, FRCP, FESC, professor of cardiology at the Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences at University College London, told Medical News Today. “These include
In 2023, Deanfield and his research team published research findings that found semaglutide — the active ingredient in GLP-1 medications Wegovy and Ozempic — could potentially reduce a person’s risk for heart attack, stroke, and major cardiac events by 20%.
Building off this research, Deanfield is the lead author of a new study recently published in the journal
For this new study funded by pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, which makes Wegovy and Ozempic, researchers analyzed medical data for more than 17,000 adults ages 45 and over who were part of the SELECT trial. Study participants were clinically overweight and had cardiovascular disease, and were randomly assigned to receive weekly injections of semaglutide or a placebo.
“Semaglutide was developed as a drug for patients with diabetes but in the SELECT trial we demonstrated that it produced a benefit on cardiovascular disease in patients with prior heart disease, but no diabetes,” Deanfield responded when asked why his research team decided to take their 2023 findings further to see what role weight loss played in heart disease prevention.
“It also produced significant weight loss, and it had been assumed that this accounted for the cardiovascular benefit,” he said.
At the new study’s conclusion, researchers found that the reduction in major adverse cardiac event risk found during their 2023 study was similar regardless of how much a study participant’s weight was at the start of the trial and how much weight they lost over the first 4.5 months of taking semaglutide.
“It suggests an effect on the causes of heart disease rather than just on weight,” Deanfield explained. “It may therefore benefit patients with relatively modest adiposity or even with BMIs in the normal range, but this needs to be tested.”
Additionally, researchers did find that participants with a smaller waist circumference — a sign of less visceral fat in the stomach area — were linked to better heart health outcomes, and accounted for about one-third of semaglutide’s overall benefit.
“Abdominal adiposity marked by waist circumference is well known to be associated with increased cardiovascular risk, and indeed in our study there was a relationship between waist circumference change and cardiovascular outcomes,” Deanfield said. “This, however, still accounted for less than a third of the cardiovascular benefit seen in patients who took semaglutide.”
Not just a ‘weight loss’ drug“Semaglutide benefits heart disease patients even with only modest weight increase and should be part of cardiometabolic disease management and not just considered as a ‘weight loss’ drug. Patients who lose little or no weight on treatment may still get a substantial cardiovascular benefit.”
— John Deanfield, FRCP, FESC
MNT spoke with Mir Ali, MD, bariatric surgeon and medical director of MemorialCare Surgical Weight Loss Center at Orange Coast Medical Center in Fountain Valley, CA, about this study, who commented he was pleasantly surprised by its results.
“It shows that there are additional benefits to semaglutide beyond diabetes control and weight loss,” Ali explained. “Since these drugs are very widely prescribed for many reasons, it is important to understand all the effects of these medications. Not only is it important to know all the beneficial effects, but it also is important to know the potential negative effects, so patients can be counseled properly.”
“The next steps would be to design a study to see the mechanism for improvement in cardiovascular health,” he added. “The others did theorize on possible mechanisms (like lowering lipid and chronic inflammation), but this needs more research to delineate more clearly.”
MNT also spoke with Cheng-Han Chen, MD, a board certified interventional cardiologist and medical director of the Structural Heart Program at Saddleback Medical Center in Laguna Hills, CA, about this research.
“Semaglutide has previously been shown in the SELECT trial to significantly reduce major adverse cardiovascular events in overweight/obese patients with known heart disease but without diabetes,” Chen explained. “This study analyzed the information from the SELECT study, and found that this benefit to cardiovascular Health did not depend on how overweight patients were or how much weight they lost.”
“This interesting finding suggests that the cardiovascular benefits of semaglutide act through a biochemical mechanism not dependent simply on changing the body weight of an individual,” he continued. “This may open up other avenues of research and therapies that could improve heart health.”
“Many recent studies have shown that semaglutide and other drugs in this category (GLP-1 agonists) offer a benefit to cardiovascular health beyond their benefits to weight loss and blood sugar control. As one of the most impactful classes of drugs in recent history, these medications have the potential to dramatically improve the rates of cardiovascular disease in the U.S.”
— Cheng-Han Chen, MD
“Future research should evaluate the possible mechanisms behind how GLP-1 agonists offer cardiovascular protection beyond their effects on weight loss and blood sugar control,” he added.
