A diabetes drug may significantly lower women’s risk of piling on the pounds after quitting smoking, according to new research. This new study has found that the diabetes drug dulaglutide (Trulicity) not only decreases the chance of women gaining wait after giving up smoking, but it made them lose an average of 1-2 kilos.
When you have diabetes, your body either doesn’t make enough insulin or can’t use it properly. This causes glucose to build up in your bloodstream, which can lead to serious health problems over time.
Normally, women are five times as likely as men to put on a lot of weight in the wake of quitting, which researchers suggest could be why they have higher smoking relapse rates. To get their results the team, funded by the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences, studied results from 255 adults who smoked an average of 20 cigarettes a day.
Trial participants were randomly assigned to receive either once weekly jabs of dulaglutide or dummy treatment.
Dulaglutide mimics the effects of a hormone which is naturally produced in the gut in response to food, helping to regulate the amount of glucose in the blood and weight gain. The results, published in BMJ Nutrition Prevention & Health, showed that after 12 weeks, the drug had curbed weight gain risk in both sexes.
Women on dulaglutide lost around 1-2 kilos compared with weight gain of around 2-2.5 kilos for women in the dummy treatment group. Men taking dulaglutide also shed just over half a kilo compared with weight gain of around two kilos among those in the dummy treatment group.
Although the drug helped both sexes it had a more significant impact on women and substantial weight gain was almost 5 times as common in women as it was in men in the dummy treatment group.
“Somewhat surprisingly the positive effects of dulaglutide on weight had no impact on short term quit rates in either men or women, which were relatively high in both,” said Dr. Bettina Winzeler. “Our data suggest that an adjunct dulaglutide treatment could be particularly useful for patients facing a high risk of substantial weight gain after smoking cessation, such as women.
“Another target group could be individuals of both genders who failed several cessation attempts due to weight gain.”
Produced in association with SWNS Talker
