Another new effect: The obesity drug helps with knee pain

Obesity medicine semaglutide significantly reduces pain from knee osteoarthritis. In addition, walking, climbing stairs and other movements become easier.

That’s what it says researchwhich has just been published in the prestigious medical journal The New England Journal of Medicine.

The study is the latest addition to the ever-growing list of diseases whose symptoms semaglutide may improve.

Semaglutidi mimics the natural human intestinal hormone glp-1, which the intestine begins to secrete after eating. This causes a feeling of satiety and reduces appetite.

Many know semaglutide better under the brand names Ozempic or Wegovy. They have been developed by the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, which has also financed and planned the recent knee osteoarthritis study.

Ozempic, which regulates blood sugar, was originally developed to treat diabetes. Wegovy is approved specifically for weight loss.

Fatness is one of the most important predisposing factors for knee osteoarthritis.

There is stiffness in the joints, and the pain makes it difficult to walk and stand up. The pain gets worse when moving and gets better at rest, but as the disease progresses, the pain can become constant.

A recent study looked at whether semaglutide is helpful for knee osteoarthritis pain in obese people.

The study was carried out in 11 countries and involved 407 people with a body mass index of at least 30. When the body mass index is 30 or more, a person is considered obese.

The subjects were randomly divided into groups, and they did not know which preparation they received. Of the participants, 271 received semaglutide and 136 received placebo. The average age of the participants was 56 years, and the majority of them were women. The participants received the preparations as injections once a week.

At the start of the study, the intensity of the knee joint pain was an average of 71 on a hundred-point scale. At that level, walking is painful. The knees were also filmed at the beginning.

When the injection treatment had lasted for 68 weeks, the pain had eased in both groups, however clearly more so in those receiving semaglutide. In the semaglutide group, pain decreased by an average of 42 points and in the placebo group by 28 points.

Those who received semaglutide also lost weight clearly.

Score are important and may be useful for patients with knee osteoarthritis, says an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Leigh Callahan science magazine Naturen in the interview.

According to the authors of the study, the relief brought by semaglutide is probably partly due to the fact that the load on the knee was lightened when the weight dropped. However, Glp-1 drugs also have anti-inflammatory effects.

There are still no miracle cures for obesity for knee pain. The drugs are currently expensive, and if you stop the treatment, most people start to regain the pounds they lost.

In the previous ones studies have indicated that semaglutide can reduce also the risk of death and the risk of strokes and heart attacks in people with cardiovascular disease.

That can be helpful too kidney disease and of dependencies in trust.

We are also currently investigating, for example, whether the drugs are effective in the course of Alzheimer’s disease.