A new study found that certain weight-loss drugs can help to protect the heart. The research also suggests that the cardiovascular benefits of these drugs could extend to a broader set of patients than clinical trial data has shown, thereby, helping prevent thousands of heart attacks and strokes each year in the U.S. The clinical trial was conducted by drugmaker Novo Nordisk.

The study used Wegovy which is a GLP-1 drug and has an active ingredient called semaglutide that is approved to treat type 2 diabetes. The results of the trial show that people using Wegovy had a 20% lower risk of a cardiac event than those who got a placebo, according to a report in CNN.

The trial consisted of people living with obesity who had a previous heart attack or stroke, or symptoms of peripheral artery disease such as clogged arteries in the arms or legs.

A new study from Dandelion Health found that GLP-1 drugs could also serve as primary prevention, thereby, reducing the risk for people with mild or moderate cardiovascular disease who hadn’t had a cardiac event. With the help of artificial intelligence, researchers analyzed real-world medical records for a set of patients who were similar to those enrolled in the Novo Nordisk clinical trial but without a history of a major adverse cardiovascular event.

The researchers tracked several years of medical history with a focus on electrocardiogram readings or measures of the heart’s electrical activity. They used AI model to analyse the benefits that GLP-1s could have in reducing the risk of heart attack or stroke and then validated those predictions against actual events.

The researchers found that GLP-1s reduced the risk of heart attack or stroke by 15% to 20%, in line with findings from the clinical trial, however, for a broader population, with benefits that could extend to 44 million additional people.

They estimated that if everyone in the broader population of potentially eligible patients took GLP-1s, it can result in 34,000 fewer heart attacks and strokes each year.

Elliott Green, co-founder and chief executive officer of Dandelion Health said, “In clinical research, you take the moderate to severe patients because you require fewer patients to prove out the efficacy. But there’s this huge danger that you will consistently miss the impact of medication on broader populations because you just can’t afford the time or money to study them. This is just a natural flaw of clinical research.”

Experts say that this group of GLP-1 drugs can act as a primary prevention tool for the prevention of cardiovascular diseases and conditions.

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