Hot topic: Can GLP-1s prevent cancer?

There’s now a good deal of observational data suggesting that GLP-1s do indeed cut the chance of developing obesity-related cancer – possibly by up to 40 per cent. 

But we all know that correlation and causation are not the same thing. 

So a group of Manchester University academics is planning to run a large study aimed at producing a definitive answer. 

They are due to present the plan at the European Congress on Obesity in Istanbul this May. 

It would involve following 5,000 people who are overweight or obese, and who also have a condition that’s a pre-cursor to cancer, such as polyps in the bowel.  

Half would be put on GLP-1-based drugs and be given dietary and weight control advice. 

The other half wouldn’t get a GLP-1, and would only receive dietary and weight control advice. 

The team said they’d have to concentrate on people with pre-cancerous conditions, because if they didn’t focus on this more at-risk group, they need 10 times as many participants. That’d make it prohibitively expensive. 

That’s because cancer is actually quite sporadic, especially when broken down to the level of individual cancer types. 

There’s a big catch to this study: it’s going to take years to get a result – about 10 years, they say. 

As well as getting an answer to the main question, “Do GLP-1s help prevent obesity-related cancer?”, they will also be able to figure out whether any protective effect of these drugs is just due to the weight loss itself, or if they work in other, more “active” ways to do so.  

And they’ll hope to be able to quantify the effect of GLP-1s on protecting against different cancer types too. 

Why does this matter? As Professor Andrew Renehan of Manchester University says, it matters because widespread use of these drugs might be able to prevent hundreds of thousands of cancers globally. 

But there are no guarantees.  

Last year a study to determine if Novo Nordisk’s GLP-1 Wegovy helped slow cognitive decline in people with early Alzheimer’s – which had been a big hope – flopped. 

Still, there are probably higher hopes for this study, because the link between obesity and cancer is known to be so strong. 

Watch this week’s hot topic below!