Active Ingredient in Type 2 Diabetes and Weight Loss Medications May Reduce Risk of Alzheimer’s Disease
By Jim Nelson | October 24, 2024
According to a widely reported new study, semaglutide, the active ingredient in many type 2 diabetes and weight loss medications, may also mitigate the risk of getting Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s takes the lives of about 120,000 Americans each year.
Researchers at Cleveland, Ohio’s Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine poured over three years of electronic medical records of roughly one million type 2 diabetes patients, many of whom were prescribed semaglutide. This study focused solely on people who had been prescribed the medication for diabetes, and the researchers zeroed in on patients with one or more cardiometabolic risk factors including obesity, high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol, chronic kidney disease, and history of stroke, who had not been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
“This is positive news for those who have diabetes and midlife overweight or obesity issues,” nutritional neuroscientist and Cognitive Care Management President/CEO Brian Browne told Senior Living News. “It’s a major breakthrough in reducing modifiable risk factors of dementia. This important finding is based on understanding the pathophysiology of Alzheimer’s disease. The brain needs specific food and fuel to operate correctly. Various metabolic pathways interrupt the body’s ability to utilize the fuel it needs to perform daily tasks. Obesity leads to metabolic disturbances that lead to diabetes which ends up starving the brain of fuel and accelerating neurodegenerative changes in the brain that lead to Alzheimer’s/dementia. GLP-1 medications allow you to lose weight safely, which lowers blood sugar and allows the pancreas to work properly to feed the brain. This leads to less circulating inflammation in the body, which reduces oxidative stress and neuroinflammation.”
Semaglutide, a GLP-1 medication, works by helping the pancreas release the right amount of insulin when blood sugar levels are high, which helps control type 2 diabetes. Semaglutide can also interact with the brain to signal a person to feel full, which can help in the reduction of weight.
The CWRUSM researchers found that semaglutide was associated with a 70 percent reduced risk when compared with insulin and 40 percent reduced risk when compared with other GLP-1 drugs, according to the study. The numbers were even better for women, on average, who saw their risk for Alzheimer’s with semaglutide lowered even more when compared to men (80 percent compared to 50 percent, respectively). Noteworthy, though, is the fact that the women in the study were younger and more prone to obesity or depression, and less likely to have heart disease, which may have impacted those numbers.
It is also worth noting that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a warning just last July about semaglutide after it received reports of people overdosing on compounded semaglutide. Some patients were giving themselves as much as 20 times the intended dose. Those overdoses, some of which required hospitalization, involve semaglutide that is drawn from a vial and taken by injection, according to the FDA.
There is currently no cure for Alzheimer’s disease. It’s not clear at this time how GLP-1 medications like semaglutide may reduce the risk of getting Alzheimer’s so more research is needed.
