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The Surprising New Side Effect Of Taking GLP-1 Medications
While many patients experience common side effects from GLP-1 medications — such as nausea and bloating, new research has revealed an unexpected positive effect beyond weight loss.
A major study involving more than 17,600 adults aged 45 and older who were overweight and had heart disease (but not diabetes) found that weekly injections of semaglutide significantly reduced the risk of major cardiovascular events.
For the study, participants were randomly assigned to receive either the drug or a placebo, and the results were striking. Those taking semaglutide saw a 20% reduction in heart attacks, strokes, and other major cardiac events.
Even more notably, the heart health benefits were consistent across all weight groups — from those only slightly overweight to those classified as obese.
“These findings reframe what we think this medication is doing,” said Dr. John Deanfield, one of the study’s authors and a cardiology professor at University College London.
“It is labelled as a weight loss jab, but its benefits for the heart are not directly related to the amount of weight lost.”
Deanfield added that this isn’t entirely surprising, noting that fat around the belly is “more dangerous for our cardiovascular health than overall weight.”
However, he emphasized that the heart benefits were largely unrelated to how much weight participants lost in the first 4.5 months of treatment.
“You don’t have to lose a lot of weight and you don’t need a high BMI [body mass index] to gain cardiovascular benefit,” Deanfield explained.
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