New study shows that semaglutide (Wygovy, Ozempic) is not linked to increased suicidal risk compared to other medications.
You may have heard that there has been concern that semaglutide may increase suicide risk based on case reports in various countries. However, according to a recent study published in Nature Medicine on January 5th, semaglutide (Wygovy, Ozempic) does not increase the risk of suicidal thoughts more than other obesity or diabetes medications.
In the study, researchers analyzed the records of over 240,000 people taking semaglutide, a glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor agonist (GLP1RA) for weight loss, and the records of 1.5 million people taking it for diabetes. In both groups, the risk of suicidal thoughts was significantly higher in patients taking other medications for the respective condition.
For example, among people who never had suicidal thoughts before, 0.11% of those who started on semaglutide for weight loss reported suicidal thoughts within the first six months. Interestingly, for those who started medications that were not GLP1RAs, the risk of suicidal thoughts was much higher at 0.43%.
Among those who had a previous history of suicidal thoughts, 6.5% of those who started on semaglutide reported suicidal thoughts whereas in those who were started on non-GLP1RAs, 14.1% had suicidal thoughts.
When the researchers analyzed the records of more than 1.5 million people with type 2 diabetes, they found the same effect - people on agents other than semaglutide had a higher risk of suicidal thoughts than those taking Ozempic.
Overall, this is a good-sized study that seems to show that semaglutide does not have any higher risk of causing suicidal thoughts than other medications used to treat the same conditions.
See the entire study summary on the National Institutes of Health website: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/people-taking-semaglutide-had-lower-risk-suicidal-thoughts