CLEVELAND, Ohio—The active ingredient in popular drugs prescribed for diabetes and weight-loss reduces the risk of heart attacks and other heart problems in people struggling with their weight even if they are not diabetic, Cleveland Clinic cardiologist Dr. Michael Lincoff told an audience Nov. 11 at the American Heart Association conference in Philadelphia.
Lincoff presented findings from an international clinical trial designed to study the effects that semaglutides, the active ingredient in the drugs Ozempic and Wegovy, have on the heart health of non-diabetics who were taking the drug for weight loss.
What they found was that the drug reduced the risk of adverse cardiac events like heart attacks, and cardiac arrest in these patients by 20%.
Semaglutide is primarily prescribed for adults with type 2 diabetes under the brand name Ozempic. But it is also approved under the brand name Wegovy for chronic weight management in adults with obesity or the condition known as overweight and at least one other health issue.
The trial, referred to as SELECT, an acronym for Semaglutide and Cardiovascular Outcomes in Patients with Overweight or Obesity Who Do Not Have Diabetes, was designed to determine if adults taking the drug for weight loss would also experience benefits to the heart.
Over the span of five years, the trial collected data on more than 17,000 patients in 41 countries. All of the patients were 45 years of age or older, had a body-mass index of 27 or greater, no history of diabetes, and had previously experienced a heart attack, stroke or heart disease.
Patients were followed for an average of 40 months and received either once-weekly injections of semaglutide or placebo.
Patients treated with semaglutide lost an average of nearly 10% of their body weight and experienced improvements in a number of other risk factors for cardiovascular disease, without any apparent health risks.
The results were also published Nov. 11 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
More than half the world population is projected to be overweight or obese by the year 2035. High body-mass index is estimated to have accounted for 4 million deaths globally in 2015, more than two thirds of which were caused by cardiovascular diseases.
“There’s growing recognition that obesity and (being) overweight are really metabolic diseases, and yet, effective therapies have been quite limited,” said Dr. Lincoff. “This study of semaglutide demonstrates the effectiveness of a new pathway to reduce the excess risk associated with obesity of important and potentially deadly cardiovascular complications.”
