Maxine Harrison
From Mounjaro to Wegovy, weight loss jabs have gained huge traction in the last few years, but there could be another health benefit to the medication beyond just shedding the pounds.
While initially designed to help manage health conditions like type two diabetes, some GLP-1 medications, such as Mounjaro, have gone on to be approved for weight loss too due to their appetite-suppressing effects.
But while they've been praised for helping people drop down the pounds, there could be another little-known benefit to the jabs too, according to new findings from scientists at National Cheng Kung University Hospital in Taiwan.
Their study suggests that GLP-1 medication could also help promote bone health.
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As part of their study, the experts reviewed results from thousands of GLP-1 users and compared them to non-GLP-1 users with type two diabetes, using data from a global electronic health record database.
The scientists’ analysis showed that those on GLP-1s had small but significant reductions in their 10-year chances of vertebral fractures.
These findings suggest that the injections could help with bone health, mitigate chronic inflammation and insulin resistance, which can, in turn, help prevent weak bones.
In a research letter for the study, Yu Chang explained: "Overall, these findings support a potential bone protective role of GLP-1 RAs [receptor agonists] and underscore the need for prospective studies to confirm causality and elucidate underlying mechanisms."
However, this study is not the first to suggest that weight loss injections can have additional benefits beyond shedding a few pounds.
For example, scientists have also suggested weight loss jabs could help some breast cancer patients with a particular strain of the illness.
The research was carried out by Dr Joyce Slingerland at Georgetown University, who looked at women diagnosed with estrogen receptor-positive (ER+) breast cancer.
She explained: “Because of estrone’s powerful inflammatory effects in fat, there’s real potential that, by inducing weight loss, GLP-1 drugs can pump the brakes on estrone’s cancer-fuelling behaviour.”
Additional strands of research have suggested that weight loss injections could chop down the amount of time you are sick.
This particular study, carried out by Oviva, looked at 700 NHS patients who use weight-loss jabs and discovered that over the span of six months, the average time a patient was off-sick reduced from 2.41 days to 1.18 days per month.
The study also found that the frequency of GP visits dropped from 24.8 percent to 9.3 percent.