(This is an excerpt of the Health Rounds newsletter, where we present latest medical studies on Tuesdays and Thursdays.)
By Nancy Lapid
(Reuters) -GLP-1 drugs for diabetes and weight loss may influence patients’ cancer risk, usually lowering it but sometimes possibly increasing it, new findings suggest.
U.S. researchers reviewed 10 years of medical records from 43,317 users and 43,315 similar nonusers of Novo Nordisk’s type 2 diabetes drugs Victoza and Ozempic or its weight-loss medication Wegovy, or Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro for diabetes or Zepbound for weight loss.
All volunteers were at risk for obesity-related cancers.
Each year, out of every thousand participants, 13.6 users of GLP-1 drugs were diagnosed with any of 14 types of cancer, compared to 16.6 nonusers, the researchers reported in JAMA Oncology.
After accounting for individual risk factors, the overall cancer risk was 17% lower in GLP-1 users.
In particular, GLP-1 use was associated with a 25% lower risk of endometrial cancer, a 47% lower risk of ovarian cancer and a 31% lower risk of meningioma.
GLP-1 drugs were also associated with a slight increase in risk for kidney cancer. The increase was not statistically significant, meaning it could have been due to chance – but an earlier study also found a higher risk of kidney cancer with use of GLP-1 drugs for diabetes, the authors note.
Observational studies like this one cannot prove cause and effect, and it’s impossible to know whether any reductions in cancer risk were due to the GLP-1 drugs themselves or to drug-induced weight loss.
Still, the researchers said, “Given that more than 137 million individuals in the U.S. are currently eligible for GLP-1 therapies, even modest changes in cancer risk could have substantial public health implications.”
CONDENSING HOURS-LONG IV INFUSIONS INTO QUICK INJECTIONS
New technology may allow quick injections of drugs that currently require slow intravenous infusions, researchers say.
The high volume of fluid required to administer so-called antibody drugs – often used for cancer, autoimmune diseases and metabolic disorders – means patients must submit to time-consuming intravenous drips. That’s because the antibodies, which are proteins, only remain stable in fluids at low concentrations.
A new method of coating the proteins, however, allows them to be stored in the high concentrations necessary for administration with a standard syringe or autoinjector device, researchers reported in Science Translational Medicine.
To pack the proteins into liquid at high concentrations but keep them stable and functional, the researchers encased tiny particles in a substance they developed called MoNi.
The coating prevents particles from dissolving or sticking together in fluid and keeps them dry and stable, the researchers said.
“We ended up with something that looks like a candy-coated chocolate, where the protein is on the inside and our special polymer forms a solid, glassy coating on the outside,” study leader Eric Appel of Stanford University said in a statement.
In tests using three different proteins – albumin, human immunoglobulin and a monoclonal antibody treatment for COVID – the researchers were able to inject a solution with more than double the concentration of typical liquid injections.
The new method “potentially works with any biologic drug, so that we can inject it easily,” Appel said.
“That takes these treatments from a several-hour ordeal at a clinic with an IV infusion to something you can do in seconds with an autoinjector at your house,” Appel said.
BOBA TEA-LIKE BEADS BEING DEVELOPED FOR WEIGHT LOSS
Plant-based microbeads resembling boba tea pearls helped rats lose weight on a high-fat diet and may one day become an option for drug-free weight loss, Chinese researchers say.
The microbeads are made from green tea and vitamin E, then coated with molecules derived from seaweed. Once ingested, the coating expands, and the green tea molecules and vitamin E bind to and trap partially digested fats in the intestine.
Rats on a high fat diet lost 17% of their total body weight when they also consumed the microbeads for a month, while rats fed the high-fat diet but without the microbeads didn’t lose weight.
The rats fed the microbeads also had less liver damage than rats fed the high-fat diet without microbeads, the researchers found.
The microbead group excreted the same amount of fat in their stool as another group of rats on a high-fat diet who received the weight-loss drug orlistat, which also works to remove partly digested fat in the intestines – but without the gastrointestinal side effects seen in the orlistat group.
Orlistat is sold over the counter as Alli by GlaxoSmithKline and by prescription as Xenical by Roche.
The researchers will present their results at the American Chemical Society Fall 2025 Digital Meeting.
In the meantime, they have begun to test the microbeads in humans.
The beads are nearly flavorless and could be easily integrated into people’s diets, the researchers say.
“We want to develop something that works with how people normally eat and live,” study leader Yue Wu, a graduate student at Sichuan University, said in a statement.
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(Reporting by Nancy Lapid; Editing by Mark Porter)
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