Ozempic, Wegovy Tied to Lower Alzheimer’s Risk With Type 2 Diabetes

For the new study, researchers examined three years of electronic health records for more than one million Americans who had type 2 diabetes and no history of Alzheimer’s disease. All of the patients had at least one other underlying health condition — such as obesity, high blood pressure, or heart disease — that would make them a good candidate for treatment with semaglutide. They were all prescribed Ozempic or one of seven older type 2 diabetes medicines such as insulin or metformin.

Overall, people on Ozempic were 41 to 67 percent less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease during the study period than individuals taking other type 2 diabetes drugs, according to findings published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia.

While the study wasn’t designed to prove whether or how semaglutide might directly reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, it’s possible that this drug may protect against inflammation and nerve cell damage in the brain that can lead to dementia, says senior study author Rong Xu, PhD, a professor and director of the Center for Artificial Intelligence in Drug Discovery at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland.

“In addition, semaglutide treats obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, smoking, and alcohol drinking, all of which are risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease,” Dr. Xu says. “Semaglutide could reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease by targeting these modifiable risk factors.”

Ozempic Benefited People With a Variety of Health Conditions

The benefits of semaglutide persisted even when researchers looked at different subgroups of individuals who often have different health outcomes.

For example, people with obesity who took Ozempic were 71 percent less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease, and the risk was 68 percent lower among those without obesity.

Similarly, women on semaglutide were 78 percent less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease than women taking insulin. The Alzheimer’s risk was 52 percent lower for men.

One limitation of the study is that patients were only followed for three years, and it’s possible that the brain health benefits of semaglutide relative to other type 2 diabetes medicines might look different after longer-term use.

Another drawback of the study is that it relied on electronic health records designed for health insurance billing, which may miss some cases of Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers lacked data from brain scans that are often used to assess whether medications cause changes in the brain that are associated with improvements in cognitive function.

Can GLP-1 Weight Loss Drugs Prevent Alzheimer’s Disease?

The study also didn’t look at tirzepatide, the main ingredient in the GLP-1 drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound.

That makes it hard to say whether the effects of Ozempic on the brain might be specific to semaglutide or extend to all GLP-1 medicines, says Adam Gilden, MD, an associate professor of internal medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora, who wasn’t involved in the new study.

“I don’t think we know enough yet about the anti-inflammatory properties of GLP-1 medications to say that it is the specific medication class,” Dr. Gilden says. “It would be interesting to see if tirzepatide has similar preventive effects in a large database analysis.”

There also isn’t enough research yet to prove Ozempic or other GLP-1 drugs directly help prevent Alzheimer’s disease, making it premature to prescribe these medicines for this purpose, says Riccardo De Giorgi, MD, DPhil, a clinical lecturer in psychiatry at the University of Oxford in England, who wasn’t involved in the new study.

“While I could see why some people would consider that, I must emphasize that we cannot give clinical recommendations based on the evidence that is currently available,” Dr. De Giorgi says.