Semaglutide is improving the heart health of millions—but how? Experts are stumped
Semaglutide is consistently associated with a significant reduction in the risk of heart attack, stroke and other adverse cardiovascular events.
According to a new analysis published in European Heart Journal, this trend appears to be about more than just weight loss—though the exact explanation is still unclear.[1]
Semaglutide is a popular GLP-1 drug sold by Novo Nordisk under the brand names Wegovy and Ozempic. The increasing use of semaglutide and other GLP-1 drugs to combat various cardiovascular risk factors is one of cardiology’s biggest trends. However, the exact science behind how these drugs are improving the cardiovascular health of patients remains a bit of a mystery. For this latest study, researchers explored data from the SELECT trial in an attempt to learn more about the relationship between semaglutide—a drug originally developed to help patients with diabetes—and the heart health of adults without diabetes.
“Several major trials have established that GLP-1 receptor agonists reduce serious cardiovascular disease, primarily in people with type 2 diabetes,” first author Professor Helen Colhoun, MBBChBAO, MD, a healthcare researcher and diabetes specialist with the University of Edinburgh, said in a statement. “SELECT was the first trial to show that these drugs can also lower cardiovascular disease in people who did not have diabetes. In this study, we analyzed data from the trial to ascertain whether the reductions in known cardiovascular risk factors that we saw in the trial could fully account for the reduction in heart disease.”
Colhoun et al. tracked differences related to body weight, waist circumference, lipids, blood pressure and more in patients given semaglutide and those given a placebo. The overall conclusion was improvements in weight loss and waist circumference only partially explain the cardiovascular benefits being seen among patients given semaglutide. There is something more going on there—but what that happens to be is not yet totally clear.
“Our analyses could not fully ascribe the effects of semaglutide on cardiovascular disease to known risk factors with any certainty,” Calhoun said. “Whether we combine all risk factors together or look at some subsets of the risk factors, no more than half of the reduction in heart disease could be explained by the changes in these risk factors. These results suggest that semaglutide should be considered as a cardiovascular disease reduction drug and not just as a weight loss drug."
She added that more research is still needed to help clinicians learn more about this significant trend.
Click here to read the full analysis.
Michael has more than 19 years of experience as a professional writer and editor. He has written at length about cardiology, radiology, artificial intelligence and other key healthcare topics.