Lose weight without having to do much about it yourself. With the so-called weight loss injections, this dream finally seems to come true. One bite a week and the pounds will fall off. Success reports on social media and from celebrities like Elon Musk are fueling the hype about the syringes. The introduction in Germany was eagerly awaited. The supposed miracle weapons Wegovy and Ozempic against unwanted body fat reserves have recently become available in this country. Both the weight loss medication Wegovy and the diabetes medication Ozempic are products containing the ingredient semaglutide. But are the weight loss injections really as good as their reputation? And what effect do the injections have on health in the medium term? A new study now provides remarkable answers.
For the study, the researchers used 17,600 patients to examine for the first time what effect the drug has on patients over 44 years old with pre-existing cardiovascular disease and overweight, but without diabetes. To this end, 8,803 test subjects received a semaglutide dose of 2.4 milligrams once a week, and 8,801 test subjects received a placebo preparation. The average follow-up period was almost 40 months. It showed that taking semaglutide reduced the risk of having a non-fatal myocardial infarction, a non-fatal stroke, or dying from a cardiovascular problem compared to placebo. After around six months, positive effects began to appear, which lasted throughout the entire follow-up period.
People who are overweight and obese have an increased risk of diseases of the cardiovascular system, including heart attacks and strokes. “Treating overweight patients without diabetes with pre-existing cardiovascular diseases with semaglutide for around three years resulted in the patients losing around 15 percent of their weight and suffering around 20 percent fewer strokes and heart attacks – without any serious side effects “, explains Alexander Bartelt, head of the research group for cardiovascular metabolism at the University of Munich Hospital, the results. Overall, the treatment and the associated weight loss improve metabolism and thus reduce cardiovascular risk factors such as blood lipids, blood pressure and inflammatory mediators, says Bartelt.
It is not yet known by what mechanism the risk of cardiovascular disease is reduced – as a side effect of weight loss or as a direct effect of the drug on the cardiovascular system. “It is also difficult to say to what extent the 33-month treatment is related to the result, since we do not know what the results would be if the treatment were significantly longer,” says Timo Müller, acting director and head of the department for Molecular Pharmacology, Institute for Diabetes Research, at the Helmholtz Center Munich.
The experts are positive about the study results. While patients who need to lose a lot of weight quickly have often only had a surgical procedure, treatment with semaglutide now gives them better options to lose a large amount of weight, says Bartelt. Afterwards, your lifestyle can help you maintain your new weight. For Andreas Zeiher, associate professor of cardiology at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, the therapy principle could even become “a so-called ‘game changer’ in the secondary prevention of atherosclerotic diseases in which obesity is a significant risk factor.”
Nicole Heißmann has summarized in a comment why treatment with weight loss injections should still be carefully considered; many overweight people benefit little or not at all from the products and they are certainly not suitable as a lifestyle product. You can find it here.
The results of the SELECT study have now been published in the specialist journal “The New England Journal of Medicine”. The expert voices come from the Science Media Center Germany.
