July 15, 2024 – People with diabetes who took the drug Ozempic were less likely to experience cognitive problems, dementia symptoms, or nicotine addiction than people taking other diabetes drugs, a new analysis shows.

Overall, the new study by researchers at Oxford University in England suggested that taking Ozempic isn’t linked to an increased risk of 22 brain or psychiatric disorders, ranging from dementia to drug addiction to depression and suicide.

The researchers evaluated medical records for more than 60,000 people in the U.S., all of whom had type 2 diabetes and were taking Ozempic, which contains the active ingredient semaglutide. (Semaglutide is also marketed under the name Wegovy, which is approved to treat obesity and overweight conditions.)

The researchers compared the risks of developing the 22 brain and psychiatric disorders within 1 year of starting treatment using Ozempic or three other common diabetes medicines (empagliflozin, glipizide, and sitagliptin).

Compared to people taking the other diabetes medicines, the people taking Ozempic experienced: 

Up to a 28% reduced risk of cognitive decline

Up to a 48% reduced risk of dementia

Up to a 28% reduced risk of nicotine addiction 

The findings are particularly important because the FDA announced in January that it was reviewing reports of suicidal thoughts among people taking Ozempic or drugs from the same class (known as GLP-1s). The agency reported at the time that it could not “definitively rule out that a small risk may exist, and that it would continue to evaluate the issue.

“Our results suggest that semaglutide use could extend beyond managing diabetes, potentially offering unexpected benefits in the treatment and prevention of cognitive decline and substance misuse,” lead study author Riccardo De Giorgi, MD, DPhil, a clinical lecturer at the University of Oxford, said in a statement. “The findings of our study therefore not only help reassure the millions of patients relying on semaglutide for diabetes management, but, if confirmed, might also have significant implications for public health in terms of reducing cognitive deficit and smoking rates among patients with diabetes.”

There are limitations to the conclusions made by the researchers, though, since medical record analyses do not control for many important factors, such as whether people actually took the medicines that they were prescribed. The findings also cannot be extended to use of other GLP-1 drugs, the authors cautioned. 

“Our study is observational, and these results should therefore be replicated in a randomized controlled trial to confirm and extend our findings,” senior study author Max Taquet, PhD, a clinical lecturer at the University of Oxford, said in a statement. “Nevertheless, they are good news for patients with psychiatric disorders, who are at an increased risk of diabetes.”