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GLP-1 medications, including semaglutide and tirzepatide, are associated with lower risks of heart attack, heart failure and death among adults with serious mental illness, Type 2 diabetes and obesity, according to a new study co-authored by Leopoldo J. Cabassa, a professor at the WashU Brown School, in collaboration with Eliut Rivera-Segarra, associate professor at the Ponce Health Science University in Puerto Rico, and Victor G. Dávila-Román, MD, professor of medicine in the cardiovascular division, professor of anesthesiology, and radiology, and director of the WashU Global Health Center.
Published Oct. 16 in the Journal of the American Heart Association, the study analyzed health records of more than 218,000 adults across 73 health care organizations. Researchers found that adults with serious mental illness, Type 2 diabetes and obesity who took glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 drugs) had significantly lower one- and three-year risks of heart attack, heart failure and death from any cause than those who did not take the medications. The associations were particularly notable among people taking semaglutide or tirzepatide.
The findings address an important health disparity. People with serious mental illness, including schizophrenia spectrum disorders, major depression and bipolar disorder, face roughly twice the cardiovascular disease risk of the general population and have life expectancies 10 to 20 years shorter, largely because of cardiovascular disease. About 5.7% of U.S. adults live with serious mental illness.
For more than a decade, Cabassa and his team have been developing, testing, and implementing health interventions to improve the health and well-being of this population. This paper provides timely national evidence that GLP-1s can benefit people with serious mental illness, but effectiveness trials are needed to inform how to best implement these new medications in community mental health centers to reduce these health disparities.
Cabassa was a co-senior author of the study, “Glucagon‐Like Peptide‐1 Receptor Agonists and Incident Cardiovascular Events and Death in Treated Serious Mental Illness, Type 2 Diabetes, and Obesity,” conducted in collaboration with researchers from WashU Medicine and Ponce Health Science University
Cabassa serves as co-director of the Center for Mental Health Services Research at the Brown School and co-director of the WashU Center for Holistic Interdisciplinary Research in Psychedelics.
Read more on the WashU Medicine website.