Novo obesity shot Wegovy helped alcoholics drink less in study

Naomi Kresge, Bloomberg News on Apr 30, 2026

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

Novo Nordisk A/S’s obesity shot Wegovy helped people with alcoholism reduce their drinking, in the first controlled study of patients who sought help with their addiction.

Volunteers on Wegovy reported drinking heavily for five days in a 30-day period after six months of treatment, 12 fewer days than before they started. The improvement showed in other measures of addiction, such as total alcohol consumption and bloodwork.

“This was totally the dream scenario,” said Mette Kruse Klausen, a doctor and researcher at the Mental Health Center Copenhagen and one of the leaders of the study. “This is very robust results because it’s significant on all the alcohol parameters that we collected.”

The 108-person study, run in Denmark, is the best indication yet that anecdotal reports of people drinking less on obesity drugs will translate to a real benefit for those struggling with alcoholism. Doctors are pushing forward with the research without much assistance from Novo, which has shied away from running its own large trials of Wegovy in alcoholism.

It’s unclear when the drug could be submitted to regulators for alcohol addiction. There are few available medicines for the disorder, and treatment rates are low.

Based on the study, about one in four people treated with Wegovy would go down two notches on the World Health Organization scale for high-risk drinking, Klausen said. For current treatments it’s one in seven, or even fewer.

New Research

Published in The Lancet, the study marks the first time researchers have used a randomized, placebo-controlled method to zero in on the impact of Wegovy on alcoholism in patients who were seeking treatment.

Studying this population is important to ensure the results are representative of the drug’s real benefit. A smaller U.S. trial last year showed lower doses of the medicine could reduce the volume of drinking and cravings in people who weren’t looking to get treated for alcoholism.

In the Danish study, people who got a dummy shot also reduced their drinking — to nine days in a 30-day period. Everyone in the study had access to therapy, which probably benefitted those in the placebo group, said Anders Fink-Jensen, the University of Copenhagen professor who oversaw the study.

“I would really expect if we had a more real-life setup, the placebo effect would be much less and you’d have more drug effect,” Fink-Jensen said.

The study is the first of several set to deliver results soon on Wegovy in alcoholism. Others will try to fill in some of the blanks left by the Danish results, such as what happens when the drug is given to people with alcoholism who aren’t obese, and whether doctors can achieve the same results using a tablet form of the medicine.

More Studies

A large study run by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ Office of Research and Development is set to start this summer. That is registered as a phase 3 trial, the last stage of drug development needed to get regulatory approval, and could deliver results by 2028.

“There is a lot of momentum to try to move forward,” said Lorenzo Leggio, a physician-scientist at the National Institutes of Health, who is leading one of the trials due to deliver results in coming months. The Danish results are exciting for the field, he said.

“It’s very timely, very important, very impactful,” Leggio said. Evidence on GLP-1 use in addiction has been growing exponentially in the past two to three years, he said, but most of the data had been from trials in animals and analysis of electronic health records. Rigorous comparison data was needed, he said, and “that’s exactly what this study does.”