People with asthma who started semaglutide had close to 40 percent fewer asthma attacks than similar patients started on an older diabetes drug, according to an analysis of United Kingdom electronic health records presented in Barcelona. The same work found a 20 percent reduction in COPD flare-ups.
The design is the most important thing to understand about the number. This was not a randomized trial. Researchers led by Professor Chloe Bloom, clinical associate professor in respiratory epidemiology at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London, ran four parallel studies using routine medical records, each covering between 20,000 and 22,000 people who started either a GLP-1 receptor agonist or a sulfonylurea, an older class of diabetes medicine. The results were presented at the European Respiratory Society Congress by Dr Bohee Lee. Across the class, people with airway disease who were prescribed GLP-1 therapies appeared to have fewer attacks than similar people on other diabetes medicines, and the effect was strongest with semaglutide in people with asthma.
