The following is a summary of “Association of semaglutide with reduced incidence and relapse of cannabis use disorder in real-world populations: a retrospective cohort study,” published in the March 2024 issue of Psychiatry by Wang et al.
Cannabis is used a lot in the United States, but despite being so common, there are currently no FDA-approved drugs for Cannabis Use Disorder (CUD).
Researchers conducted a retrospective study to understand the connections between semaglutide, a glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1RA), with both incident and recurrent CUD, compared to non-GLP-1RA medications.
They calculated the HR and 95% CI for incident and repeated CUD cases for over 12 months by comparing the propensity scores of matched patient groups. The study involved 85,223 obese patients who got either semaglutide or non-GLP-1RA anti-obesity medicines. They also checked the findings with 596,045 patients who had Type 2 Diabetes (T2D).
The results showed that semaglutide had a decreased likelihood of developing new and recurring cardiovascular diseases compared to non-GLP-1RA anti-obesity drugs (HR: 0.56, 95% CI: 0.42-0.75) for new and (HR: 0.62, 95% CI: 0.46-0.84) for recurring CUD risk. Similar findings were replicated in the study population with T2D when comparing semaglutide with non-GLP-1RA anti-diabetes medications for incident CUD (HR: 0.40, 95% CI: 0.29-0.56) and recurrent CUD (HR: 0.66, 95% CI: 0.42-1.03).
Investigators concluded that semaglutide exhibited potential advantages for CUD. Additional preclinical research is necessary to understand how it works, and clinical trials are required to validate its clinical use for CUD.