GLP-1 drugs research: summary
- GLP‑1 drugs may move beyond diabetes and weight loss into multi‑disease therapies
- This could significantly increase the number and profile of users, including non‑obese and older populations
- Innovations such as oral GLP‑1s may further accelerate uptake and accessibility
- For food and beverage, the shift needs to be watched closely to understand behaviour change, consumption patterns and nutritional needs
GLP-1s started life as diabetes medications, then took the world by storm for treating obesity.
But now new evidence is pouring in for potential benefits that extend far beyond weight loss. Combined with developments like oral GLP-1s, that could mean a future with millions more people taking them for entirely different reasons.
“For food and beverage companies, understanding who is using them and why, and how that reshapes need states, will be critical to staying relevant,” says Sally Lyons Wyatt, Global Chief Advisor, Circana Consumer Goods & Foodservice.
Here’s a snapshot of some of the newest research and what it means for food and beverage…
GLP-1s and cancer
This area of research is on fire, with studies underway and results coming out fast on both prevention and treatment.
This year’s 2026 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting revealed two such studies.
In the first, an analysis of more than 110,000 women found that those on GLP-1s were 30% less likely to develop breast cancer. These results were so positive that a prospective clinical trial has been designed to find out if GLP-1 drugs can prevent breast cancer.
While the study was observational (meaning that causality can’t be confirmed), “it does add to the growing body of evidence suggesting that it’s worth investigating these weight-loss drugs as potential cancer prevention tools”, says lead author, Professor Elizabeth McDonald.
The second observational study looked at the health records of more than 12,000 people and found that GLP-1s were associated with a lower risk of tumour spread in lung, breast, colorectal and liver cancer by just under 40% to 50% (depending on type), compared with older drugs called gliptins.
“These studies suggest GLP-1 drugs may one day, after robust clinical trials, be used by many more people than they are today,” says Professor Marcin Chwistek, Chief of Supportive Oncology and Palliative Care Program at Fox Chase Cancer Center. “They point to effects beyond appetite suppression, from reduced inflammation to possible direct signalling on tumour cells.”
F&B takeaway: It almost goes without saying that GLP-1s for cancer prevention or treatment would dramatically accelerate their adoption, both in private use and in public health systems, shifting them firmly into the health space.
The user profile would also shift and manufacturers would need to think carefully about the varying nutritional needs of those taking them for that purpose.
But F&B has time to prepare. “My best guess on timeframe is five to ten years before anything like this changes practice, and likely longer for cancer prevention specifically,” says Professor Chwistek.
GLP-1s and biological ageing
GLP-1s have “attracted interest as gerotherapeutics”, according to the authors of a small new study that looked at whether semaglutide could slow down biological ageing in people with HIV.
Gerotherapeutics is a field of research focused on finding therapies that target the biological processes of ageing to prevent all of its associated diseases, rather than treating them one by one.
This study tracked cellular ageing and found that those treated with semaglutide (compared with placebo) showed slower biological aging across inflammation, brain and heart ageing measures.
These encouraging results mean that “prospective trials are needed to determine whether GLP-1 receptor agonists can be repurposed as gerotherapeutics”, say the authors.
F&B takeaway: In the UK, private usage of GLP-1s is highest in the 30-39 age group, followed by 50 to 59, but declines after age 60 years. However, if the criteria widened to target age-related diseases, not only will more younger people start taking them but the age range might expand.
In the US, that already seems to be happening. “As more disease states have been noted to benefit from GLP-1 medication coupled with the pill introduction, we have seen that GLP-1 users have shifted to a slightly older audience: 55+ gained nearly +9 share points over the past year while adults 45-54 lost -7 share points,” says Circana’s Lyons Wyatt.
The GLP-1 class is the most scientifically credible candidate for disease modification in osteoarthritis to emerge in many years
Jay Karri, University of Maryland School of Medicine
GLP-1s and addiction
How GLP-1s act in the brain is now a huge area of research that could potentially transform addiction treatment.
Previous research has looked at single substances such as alcohol and cannabis, but a 2026 observational study in the British Medical Journal looked at multiple substances and extended its reach into opioids.
It analysed more than 600,000 veterans with type 2 diabetes and, compared with patients on non-GLP-1 medications, being on GLP-1s was associated with being 14% less likely to develop a substance abuse disorder (SUD).
And among those who already had an SUD, there was a 31% reduction in emergency department visits, 26% reduction in hospitalisations, 39% reduction in overdose and 50% reduction in drug-related deaths in those on GLP-1s over three years.
These data “suggest a potential role for GLP-1 receptor agonists in both the prevention and the treatment of various SUDs”, according to the study authors.
F&B takeaway: Keeping an eye on this area of research is vital for F&B as it not only potentially increases the number of GLP-1 users, but ties in to the research around quietening food noise and how the drugs act in the brain. “GLP-1s also silence drug noise – the intrusive thoughts about using and the magnetic pull toward an addictive substance that dominates the minds of people with addiction,” says Dr Ziyad Al-Aly, Professor of Medicine at Washington University, US, and lead author of the study.
“GLP-1 drugs are not just gut hormones, they cross the blood-brain barrier and bind to receptors in the mesolimbic system, which modulates reward signalling. They do not act against a single addictive substance, they act against the craving that drives addictions. This explains why they work across substances.
“With further research, it is plausible they might one day be treatments for addiction in those without diabetes or obesity.”
GLP-1s and osteoarthritis
Osteoarthritis (OA) is a painful, degenerative joint disease that affects over 600 million people globally.
A newly released study looked at patients with knee OA and whether taking GLP-1s could reduce progression to needing a total knee arthroplasty (TKA – also known as total knee replacement).
It found that GLP-1 use was associated with a significantly reduced long-term risk of TKA, and effects were greater with longer treatment duration and newer generation GLP-1s.
This is momentous news.
“Osteoarthritis remains one of the leading causes of chronic pain and disability globally,” says Jay Karri, Assistant Professor of Pain Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and lead author.
“Despite decades of research and numerous clinical trials, not a single disease-modifying therapy has been approved for osteoarthritis. The GLP-1 class is the most scientifically credible candidate for disease modification in osteoarthritis to emerge in many years.
“We are appropriately cautious, but this is one of the more genuinely promising developments in osteoarthritis research in recent memory.”
And, he says, the results are not just because of weight loss. “These medications may be acting on the knee through three simultaneous routes: reducing mechanical stress, protecting joint tissue directly and alleviating the pain that drives surgical decision-making.”
F&B takeaway: “What’s important here is the ripple effect,” says Circana’s Lyons Wyatt. “As GLP-1s help improve mobility and reduce pain tied to conditions like osteoarthritis, they can enable more consumers to re-engage with healthier lifestyles, from exercise to more intentional nutrition. That has meaningful implications for food and beverage, as it could expand demand for products that support energy, recovery and overall wellness.”
“This cascade of benefits is an important and underappreciated dimension of what GLP-1s may offer,” says Professor Karri. “Chronic knee pain limits physical activity, which promotes weight gain and worsens metabolic control, which drives further systemic inflammation, which accelerates joint damage, which increases pain further.
“It is a self-reinforcing cycle that is hard to interrupt with any single intervention. GLP-1 medications have the potential to disrupt multiple points in that cycle simultaneously.”
And that’s not all…
Research has established the protective effects of GLP-1 for the heart but “we recently showed that the cardioprotective effects of GLP-1 drugs in patients at high risk of cardiovascular events are long-term and independent of diabetes status, indicating that they have the potential to be beneficial for patients who do not currently meet the prescription criteria,” says Dr Simon Cork, senior lecturer in physiology at Anglia Ruskin University.
“We have also shown that they prevent the build-up of proteins associated with Alzheimer’s disease (at least in animal models), but the effect appears to be protective against future disease, rather than active disease.”
Key takeaways
“All of this points towards these drugs being protective for a number of diseases, many of which are driven by inflammation,” says Dr Cork. “Future evidence may highlight specific populations, not yet covered by guidance, who may benefit from taking them.”
For food and beverage, this will create challenges as well as opportunities but staying across the science is essential for exploiting them.
Finally, it must be remembered that GLP-1s come with side-effects and won’t be for everyone, and Dr Cork highlights one key point. “One has to balance all of this with the understanding that these drugs will cause weight loss in any patient who takes them,” he says. “Patients who are not obese, or indeed underweight, will still experience weight loss on these medications, so that needs to be balanced with any other potential health benefit.”
