Semaglutide for Obesity Yields Fewer Deaths from COVID-19
This is a truly remarkable finding. In the middle of the SELECT study of semaglutide for preventing deaths in people with obesity and heart disease, the COVID-19 pandemic struck. So researchers nimbly adapted and began collecting data on COVID outcomes. They found a big surprise. People who got COVID-19 and were treated with semaglutide had fewer serious problems with the infection and fewer deaths because of it.
Let that sink in. Treating obesity in the middle of a pandemic reduced the incidence of deaths from infectious diseases. It’s a “stunning” observation, says Jeremy Faust, an emergency medicine professor at the Harvard Medical School.
Building on Observational Data
This finding builds on data about the association of metabolic surgery with better outcomes from COVID-19. The difference in this new analysis is the randomized nature of the study at hand. People with obesity and heart disease received a random assignment to either take semaglutide or a placebo. That cuts the likelihood of unknown factors getting in the way of conclusions about the effects of treating obesity on the odds of survival in the COVID pandemic.
Of the 17,604 persons enrolled in the SELECT study, 4,258 developed COVID-19, and 2,150 of them received semaglutide. So semaglutide had no effect on the rate of COVID-19 infections. But persons treated with semaglutide were less likely to have serious COVID-related adverse events than those on placebo (232 vs 277; P = 0.04).
Of course, there are caveats. This is a secondary analysis and there is always the possibility of spurious findings when testing subgroups and different components of composite endpoints.
Robust Reductions in Death
Despite those caveats, this is an impressive study. The authors conclude:
“These findings highlight the mortality benefit of semaglutide across a broad population of patients with CV disease and obesity. The robust reduction in non-CV death, particularly infectious deaths, was surprising and perhaps only detectable because of the COVID-19–related surge in non-CV deaths; however, these findings reinforce that overweight and obesity increase the risk of death because of many etiologies, which can be modified with potent incretin-based therapies like semaglutide.”
At this point, there can be little doubt that effective obesity care can protect a person from many bad health outcomes – including from infectious diseases.
Click here for the study, here for Faust’s commentary, here and here for further perspective.
It’s Corona Time, photograph by Reinhold Möller, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
Subscribe by email to follow the accumulating evidence and observations that shape our view of health, obesity, and policy.
August 31, 2024
