It is no secret that alcohol use disorder is a risk after metabolic and bariatric surgery. The risk rises as time passes after surgery, with one study finding three percent of patients followed for a median of six years having one alcohol use disorder diagnosis in their medical records. Another study found that three years after gastric bypass, the risk of alcohol use disorder rose by 80%. But now, we find encouraging data on the risk of alcohol use disorder in persons using a GLP-1 agonist (liraglutide, semaglutide, or tirzepatide) after bariatric surgery.

Butros Fakhoury and colleagues published a retrospective cohort study in JAMA Network Open. It was a study of 15,382 adults who received an obesity medicine after surgery. The comparison group received one of the older obesity medicines that do not work on GLP-1 receptors.

In those receiving a GLP-1, the risk of alcohol use disorder post surgery was cut by roughly half.

Observational Data Requires Caution

Of course, we should remember that this is an observational study. So there could be other factors influencing these outcomes. Any number factors could find their way into these data to influence who gets which medicine, as well as who gets any obesity medicine at all after surgery. So this is not definitive evidence that GLP-1s do cut the risk of alcohol use disorder after surgical obesity treatment.

A Tantalizing Clue

But it is certainly a tantalizing clue that it might have this benefit. Considering other reports on the effects of GLP-1s in alcohol use disorder, it definitely deserves our attention and further study.

Alcohol use disorder is a known risk of metabolic surgery. So evidence that GLP-1s might cut that risk while also helping with longer-term outcomes is encouraging, to say the least.

Click here for the study by Fakhoury et al. For more on the link between metabolic surgery and alcohol use disorder, click here and here.

Eggnog, illustration created for ConscienHealth with Gemini image generation