Actually a diabetes drug, drugs like Wegovy apparently have other positive effects.
Image: dpa
New career for an active substance? At the European Cardiology Congress, it was discussed whether diabetes drugs could also be used to treat heart disease.
DDiabetes medications can do more than just lower blood sugar. The active substance semaglutid, for example, which has since made an astonishing career as a “weight loss injection” outside of diabetes treatment, also reduces the risk of heart attacks and strokes in non-diabetics. There was a lot of discussion about this at the ESC Congress of the European Society of Cardiology, which was held in Amsterdam at the end of August.
The Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk presented – as yet unpublished – results of a large-scale study with semaglutid at the congress. According to the study, overweight and obese people who received semaglutide for a period of five years were 20 percent less likely to have heart attacks, strokes and cardiovascular deaths. “This is revolutionizing cardiology,” commented cardiologist Subodh Verma from St Michael’s Hospital in Toronto at one of the ESC discussion events. He believes that the findings will largely change the current approach to the treatment of overweight and obese patients with heart disease.