Ozempic Cuts Kidney Damage by 52%

Ozempic Cuts Kidney Damage by 52%
Ozempic Cuts Kidney Damage by 52% Credit | Getty images

United States: A new study shows that the weight-loss drug Ozempic can help protect against kidney disease in obese people. Patients who took semaglutide which mainly the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy, had up to a 52% reduction in kidney damage, based on urine tests.

These findings were hereby reported on October 25 in the particular journal Nature Medicine and will be shared at the American Society of Nephrology’s annual meeting.

Semaglutide patients also recorded a 30% decrease in kidney inflammation and physicians identified.

“The good thing is that the drug triggers changes in the kidneys both directly and indirectly,” said lead researcher Hiddo Heerspink of the University Medical Center Groningen in the Netherlands.

As reported by the Health Day, “The drug operates directly on inflammation indexes in the kidney and reduces adipose tissue in the vicinity of the kidneys and the degree of proteinuria,” Heerspink said. “And indirectly because participants lose some weight and their blood pressure decreases.”

To explain the finding, the authors recently described the case of 101 obese patients with CKD from Canada, Germany, Spain, and the Netherlands with enrolment beginning in 2022.

Half of the subjects had subcutaneous injections of semaglutide for 24 weeks, whereas the others received placebo injections.

The patients who consumed the drug also shed about 10 percent of their body weight that was also accompanied by reduced high blood pressure comparable to that achieved by taking an anti-high blood pressure drug, the researchers said.

Other studies also reveal that the drug had kidney-sparing effects in the patients.

“Everything indicates one can proceed to evaluate the efficacy of this drug in a huge trial,” Heerspink said in a meeting news release. One would like to know if it can pave way to fewer cases of dialyses or even a kidney transplant. I would also, very much, like to look into whether this drug also has a positive effect in patients with kidney damage but not obesity.