One of the world’s largest studies of Ozempic, Mounjaro and other blockbuster diabetes and obesity drugs highlighted their impact on the brain, pointing to benefits from addiction to schizophrenia.

The research tracked the effects of GLP-1 receptor agonists on diabetic U.S. veterans for up to five years, making it one of the most extensive so far on a class of medicines that includes Novo Nordisk A/S’s Wegovy and Eli Lilly & Co.’s Zepbound.

The study, published Monday in the journal Nature Medicine, found protective effects related to impulse control, adding to evidence that the medicines may not only suppress appetite but also help curb alcoholism and other addictions.

“These drugs are helping us uncover the real underpinnings of obesity,” said coauthor Ziyad Al-Aly, director of the Clinical Epidemiology Center at the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System.

“Effectively treating obesity requires drugs that address the root cause: addictive-like behavior toward food,” he said. “This may explain why GLP-1s have been so spectacularly successful as anti-obesity medicines, while many previous treatments that didn’t target the addiction pathway have failed miserably.”

The findings support ongoing research into the medicines’ potential for treating opioid- and cocaine-use disorders, further broadening the scope of these drugs, which Bloomberg Intelligence estimates will reap over $93 billion globally by 2030 for obesity alone.

Al-Aly’s earlier research mined the Veterans Affairs’ extensive databases to uncover links between prolonged use of popular heartburn medications and kidney damage, as well as the long-term health impacts of COVID-19.

The latest study analyzed almost 216,000 patients taking GLP-1s for a median of three years and seven months, examining associations with 175 health outcomes and comparing results to those of patients on other diabetes drugs or receiving standard care for the metabolic disorder.

The study is notable for examining a broad range of medical conditions, said Christian Hendershot, director of clinical research at the University of Southern California’s Institute for Addiction Science in Los Angeles.

“It doesn’t prove anything about causality, as the authors acknowledge, but it’s a nice starting point for narrowing in on which classes of disorders we might want to study,” said Hendershot, who is researching GLP-1s for addictions to nicotine and alcohol.

The results consistently showed both benefits and risks beyond those currently recognized, according to Al-Aly. Drawbacks included an increased likelihood of drug-induced acute pancreatitis or inflammation of the pancreas, low blood pressure, fainting, arthritic conditions, and kidney stones.