The anti-obesity medication semaglutide may help to prevent heart attacks and other major adverse cardiac events among overweight people who have cardiovascular disease, whether or not they also have heart failure, according to a new study led by UCL's Professor John Deanfield. The results follow previous research from the same international team finding that weekly injections of semaglutide were linked to a 20% reduction in major adverse cardiac events (MACE) such as heart attacks and strokes for people with obesity or who were overweight and had cardiovascular disease . The new study, published in The Lancet , found similar cardiovascular benefits for a subgroup of study participants who were also judged to have heart failure (i.
e. whose hearts did not pump blood around the body properly) by a clinician at the start of the trial. The researchers looked at data from 4,286 people—out of a total of 17,605 from the landmark Semaglutide and Cardiovascular Outcomes (SELECT) trial who were randomly assigned either semaglutide or a placebo—who were followed up over an average of more than three years.
They found that semaglutide was linked to a 28% reduction in major adverse cardiac events (12.3% in the placebo group had such events compared to 9.1% in the semaglutide group), as well as a 24% reduction in cardiovascular disease-related deaths for this subgroup of people with pre-existing heart failure, and a 19% reduction in deaths of any cause.
Lead author Professor John Deanf.