Widespread weight reduction medicine like Ozempic and Wegovy are exhibiting unbelievable short-term advantages – from boosted metabolic well being to ache reduction to habit and cognitive well being.
These are actually promising preliminary indicators, but it surely’s essential to recollect the long-term uncomfortable side effects are nonetheless coming to mild.
Just lately, some consultants have raised considerations that novel weight reduction medicine – often called glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists – could possibly be inflicting important skeletal muscle loss in addition to fats loss. However there’s not sufficient information to say for positive.
Now, researchers on the College of Alberta in Canada have added to the dialogue by citing a subset of muscular tissues that solely exist within the coronary heart.
Cardiac muscular tissues are what preserve our hearts pumping blood round our our bodies, and but little analysis has investigated how these tissues cope with GLP-1 agonists.
For 21 days, researchers at Alberta administered semaglutide – the lively ingredient in Ozempic – to each lean and overweight mice with out diabetes or cardiac dysfunction.
The overweight mice misplaced about 30 p.c of their physique weight and 65 p.c of their fats mass in comparison with untreated mice.
Amongst lean mice that have been handled with semaglutide, researchers famous a roughly 8 p.c discount in skeletal muscle over the course of three weeks.
Whereas there have been no noticed adjustments to coronary heart operate or the thickness of coronary heart partitions, each teams of mice handled with semaglutide confirmed decreases in total coronary heart mass and the person dimension of their coronary heart muscle cells.
“Together,” the authors conclude, “these data indicate that the reduction in cardiac size induced by semaglutide occurs independent of weight loss.”
To discover additional, the group of researchers, led by medical scientist Matthew Martens, turned to human cells. Within the lab, when human cardiac muscle cells have been handled with semaglutide, they confirmed important reductions in dimension.
Given these outcomes, the authors admit it’s tempting to invest that semaglutide is chargeable for cardiac shrinkage and atrophy. “However,” they word, “we do not observe any changes in recognized markers of atrophy.”
The means they can’t be sure semaglutide is inflicting the atrophy of cardiac muscular tissues, or even when this lack of muscle is a nasty factor. In some instances, it may probably confer advantages.
However, the findings amongst mice and human cells recommend that semaglutide “has the potential to be detrimental in the long term” to coronary heart muscular tissues.
If the findings translate to residing people, then it means folks with current heart problems or muscle atrophy could possibly be putting their hearts at added danger if they’re prescribed semaglutide or related medicine.
It is unknown whether or not weight loss plan or train can offset these potential coronary heart muscle losses, however that’s one thing future analysis ought to examine, as this appears to be the case with skeletal muscle loss.
“We suggest that cardiac structure and function be carefully evaluated in previous and ongoing clinical studies,” Martens and his colleagues at Alberta conclude.
The decision to motion is supported by one other latest paper, revealed in a journal run by the American Coronary heart Affiliation, whose authors argue the consequences of GLP-1 agonists on muscle well being ought to be studied in a “more objective and comprehensive” manner, particularly given “the substantial numbers of patients who will likely be taking these medications well into the future.”
The research was revealed in The Lancet.
