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A conference poster presented at the European Congress on Obesity (ECO) looks at weight loss drugs (GLP-1s) and reduced alcohol intake.
Prof Kevin McConway, Emeritus Professor of Applied Statistics, Open University, said:
“Usually, when I’m asked to comment on a press release about a poster or talk being presented at a research conference, there’s not a lot that I can say about the quality of the work. All I would typically have is a short press release, and a poster or a summary of talk that hasn’t been given yet. The work wouldn’t have been through full peer review. So there’s very little to go on, and usually a lot of unanswered questions.
“But this one is different. This is not new work. The press release includes a link to the research report that was submitted to a journal in November last year, went through peer review, and appeared in the journal at the start of 2025. The press release, and the conference poster that is also linked from the release, appear just to give some of the same details that are already in the published research report1.
“The research report, the poster and the press release all mention that the study has some important limitations. The study is observational and there was not a control group that received none of the drugs in question (liraglutide or semaglutide). Thus we can’t be certain how much of the observed reduction in alcohol consumption is actually due to the drugs that the participants were taking. Even though the average consumption reductions are pretty large, the participants were all being treated and all knew they were being treated with one or other of the drugs, and may have chosen to change their alcohol intake for reasons not caused by the drugs, in addition to any changes actually caused by taking the drugs.
“The report does not present any data on what happened to alcohol consumption in the longer term, or after the participants stopped taking the drugs (if they did stop). The alcohol consumption figures were reported by the participants themselves, so may not be accurate, and the level of inaccuracy in the before and after consumption figures may be different. And a lot of the participants who started the study did not in the end provide data. More than a quarter of the 262 patients who were originally in the study didn’t continue to the end of the study, and some who did continue were either non-drinkers or did not provide data on the actual amounts the consumed. So the overall average change in consumption is based on data from 86 people only. And the most dramatic reductions in consumption, in people who originally said they drank more than 10 units per week, are based on data from only 30 people.
“These limitations are why the researchers (rightly) ask for larger, controlled and randomised trials, for research to investigate how these drugs operate in the body to reduce alcohol consumption (if indeed they do), and to look at which patients are appropriate for treatment.
“However, this study is very far from the only work that has been done on drugs from this class (GLP-1 RAs) and reduction in alcohol consumption. A quick Google search turns up many more. The research report mentions a study in laboratory animals (reference 4) and there are other animal studies. There have been observational studies, some of them involving large numbers of participants2. There have been (small) randomised controlled trials3. And there have recently been (at least) two review papers4. This newly press-released conference poster certainly isn’t the latest state of the art, I’d say.”
1 The report (a ‘research letter’) is at https://doi.org/10.1111/dom.16152 . There is a minor typo in the press release; it says that, overall, the average alcohol consumption fell from 11.3 to 4.3 units/week, whereas the research paper and the poster say it fell from 11.8 to 4.3 units/week.
2 e.g. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-48780-6
3 e.g. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2024.4789, comment on for SMC at https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-study-looking-at-once-weekly-semaglutide-in-adults-with-alcohol-use-disorder/
4 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eclinm.2024.102920 and https://doi.org/10.1210/endocr/bqaf028
Mr Colin Angus, Professor of Alcohol Policy, Sheffield Addictions Research Group, University of Sheffield, said:
“This study follows a few hundred patients attending an obesity clinic who were prescribed GLP-1 weight loss drugs and finds that they were drinking significantly less after around 4 months. However, as this study has no control group, we have no way of knowing whether this reduction was related to their use of GLP-1, or a broader consequence of their efforts to tackle obesity. Whilst it is plausible that GLP-1 drugs might have some impact on alcohol consumption, it is also likely that people trying to lose weight would reduce their alcohol consumption anyway, either as part of a more general move towards healthier behaviours, or because alcohol is relatively calorific. So we have no way of knowing from this study what proportion, if any, of the observed reduction is down to the GLP-1 drugs. Only with a higher quality study incorporating a control group could we have any confidence that GLP-1 drugs are leading people to reduce their alcohol intake.”
Dr Stephen Burgess, Statistician at the MRC Biostatistics Unit, University of Cambridge, said:
“This is an observational study investigating the impact of weight loss drugs on alcohol intake. It isn’t a randomized trial, so it isn’t blinded, and there is no control group. In general, this sort of research is vulnerable to problems of confounding – differences between alcohol intake pre- and post-treatment may occur for reasons other than a causal effect of weight loss drugs on alcohol consumption levels. For example, it may be that people cut down on their drinking spontaneously due to taking medication. However, the findings are striking and consistent across study participants. No study participant reported their alcohol consumption was higher after treatment. The average reduction in alcohol consumption pre- versus post-treatment was around 7 units per week, which is a large difference. It is possible that some participants are falsely reporting lower consumption, and it’s possible that some participants who are drinking more post-treatment are refusing to volunteer information – we only have quantifiable alcohol consumption levels available for around 35% of eligible patients. But the magnitude of difference in reported alcohol consumption pre- versus post-treatment is so large that it is implausible that other factors explain the totality of the difference. These results provide suggestive evidence that weight loss drugs could be used to treat alcohol addiction. We await evidence from randomized controlled trials with blinding to strengthen the evidence supporting this finding.”
Poster title: ‘Glucagon-like Peptide-1 Analogs Reduce Alcohol Intake’ by FI Almohaileb et al.
This was presented at the European Congress on Obesity. The embargo lifted at 3:01 UK time on Friday 9 May 2025
Declared interests
Prof Kevin McConway: “Previously a Trustee of the SMC and a member of its Advisory Committee.”
Mr Colin Angus: “No conflicts to declare.”
Dr Stephen Burgess: “I have previously consulted for Eli Lilly (one of the manufacturers of GLP-1 drugs), but not specifically about GLP-1 drugs.”