GLP-1 drugs linked to lower death rates in colon cancer patients

https://today.ucsd.edu/story/glp-1-drugs-linked-to-dramatically-lower-death-rates-in-colon-cancer-patients

74•gmays•2h ago

Comments

bicx•1h ago

Maybe I'm just an aging cynic, but I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop when it comes to GLP-1s. There have been so many claims of positive benefits that it almost seems too good to be true. With them being so expensive, the producers have every incentive to upsell using any study they can get their hands or money on.

If it's all upside, then I'm happy to be wrong.

bitwize•1h ago

Haven't you been reading Hackernews for the past 10 years? Sugar has been implicated in pretty much every major late-life disease, and the closest thing to a cure before GLP-1 agonists was fasting.

phantasmish•1h ago

… and the mechanism by which GLP-1s cause weight loss is, more or less, by making fasting really easy.

lm28469•1h ago

That's such a lazy and unimaginative take that basically skips 99.999% of human history during which sugar wasn't a problem at all.

tengbretson•42m ago

The baseline lifestyle of 99.999% of human history would, by modern classifications, be considered intermittent fasting.

jimbokun•31m ago

That was the part of history when humans didn’t have much access to cheap sugar.

pessimizer•1h ago

Hacker News has extreme orthorexia and endorses all sorts of quackery.

robbomacrae•1h ago

There have been some. I've heard about eyesight related issues. A quick google found this article [0] where results showed that people using GLP-1 drugs were 68.6 times more likely to develop certain types of vision problems.

[0]: https://www.aao.org/newsroom/news-releases/detail/do-glp-1-d...

phantasmish•1h ago

A lot of the issues are hydration-related, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the eye ones are, too. Some water intake is from food, so if you eat less, you need to drink more. If you also tend to drink with food, and you’re eating less, you may drink less instead of the more that you need to be. Add in a generally dulled “I crave something” sense and you’ve got a recipe for not just going all day without eating, but also without drinking.

azinman2•1h ago

This is also an extremely rare vision problem. So absolute numbers are very tiny. The absolute numbers for diabetes, weight related problems, etc far dwarf this.

robbomacrae•55m ago

Right. On the whole I think these things are incredible.. looking to try myself after reading here in HN the other day about it working for all sorts of distractions. Just wanted to point out it's not all sunshine and rainbows which would certainly be suspicious.

bpodgursky•1h ago

GLP-1s are just showing what people always knew to be true but was not clinically actionable — most of our health problems come from eating too much and being fat.

Well, now it's actionable. No magic, just adherence.

degamad•52m ago

We don't quite have the data to say "most" yet, but it's certainly looking like "many" is justifiable.

infecto•1h ago

I don’t know. Having listened to a number of interviews with some of the founders in this area of drug research I came away with a much higher respect and significantly less cynicism toward big pharmaceutical. Novo Nordisk is run by a nonprofit even.

gwbas1c•1h ago

Some people stop using it due to personality changes.

matthewdgreen•51m ago

Say more?

ilikecakeandpie•46m ago

Yeah I stopped because I didn't like the way it made me feel. I needed it because my blood sugar was way too high and it helped me drop close to 60 pounds in 6-8 months, but I did not like how it made me feel and I lost more muscle than I was happy with.

I've gained about 15-20 pounds back, but I'm now much healthier overall.

I like how my brain works and I didn't like something affecting or changing that because I couldn't put the fork down. Easy decision for me

AndrewDucker•19m ago

I'd be interested to know how it changed you.

helicalmix•1h ago

I think it's totally fair to be skeptical, but it's also not rare to have interventions that are astoundingly effective.

Antibiotics and vaccines may not be completely free lunches, but they're very good at what they do.

piker•1h ago

The fact is though that but-for taking the drugs a lot of the folks that take these things would be long dead before, say, the GLP-1 induced cancer kicked in.

ecshafer•1h ago

GLP-1s have been peescribed for like 20 years, but have been limited more to diabetics and extreme cases. So there is pretty good data. Not to say there isnt going to be side effects in some population sample, but we need to compare that with obesity and diabetes (which is a very bad disease).

OptionOfT•1h ago

Even with an increased risk of mortality, at least right now I can live. The voice in my head that is constantly telling me I'm hungry is quiet.

Without it I'd die sooner anyway.

stavros•54m ago

It's not even "I'm hungry", it's just "must have more food". What a nuisance.

radial_symmetry•1h ago

Most medications have negative side effects because otherwise our bodies would already have whatever changes they make through evolution. My personal theory (based on nothing but my own intuition) is that GLP-1s are an adaptation to the modern world that evolution hasn't caught up with yet.

ammon•1h ago

And we know what the adaptation is: calorie constraint. We evolved in a calorie constrained environment. We don't live in one now. Our set point for desire to eat is clearly too high. None of this means that glp-1 inhibitors don't have other side effects, of course.

lm28469•1h ago

> Most medications have negative side effects because otherwise our bodies would already have whatever changes they make through evolution.

That's not what evolution is, at all

gedy•1h ago

At this point I view the risks/downsides as akin to vaccines. Sure things happen, the overwhelming positives greatly outweigh this.

unsupp0rted•1h ago

Not everything has another shoe to drop.

Getting people to eat more broccoli is almost entirely upside. Sure a handful of people will be allergic or whatever, but on a population level some interventions are just one positive after another, and there's no reason it has to be a deal made with the devil.

cerved•1h ago

Well glp1 doesn't make you want to eat broccoli. Just less in general

daedrdev•1h ago

sure but it definitely makes carbs specifically disgusting in my case

stavros•55m ago

I can confirm that. On GLP-1s (when they worked for me, anyway), I'd routinely think "pizza? Bleh, so fatty, I'd really like some chicken breast with roast potatoes instead right now".

jesse_dot_id•1h ago

Same. I think that pharmaceutical industry is lot more bleak now than it was when Fen-Phen became popular. GLP-1 usage is largely off-label as far as I know, but I wouldn't trust them even if it wasn't. There is a mountain of precedent for these companies to choose profit over health, and for our government(s) to aid them in covering up evidence of negative effects on the latter for the sake of the former.

topato•31m ago

The popularity of these drugs is specifically from the FDA-approved "weight loss" indication. You're at least a few years behind. I would also think the many many years when it was only prescribed for diabetes would have yielded some data about negative effects, (other than the ocular issue) if there were any. Glp-1s were so unprofitable, Novo Nordisk let their Canadian patent lapse almost a decade ago, rather than pay the upkeep fee lol. So I dont think anyone is protecting them from bad press.

CyanLite2•1h ago

Its not upside per se, more like avoiding the downsides of diabetes and obesity.

Healthy, non-obese individuals likely aren't seeing these "benefits"... But I'm not a doctor, I just pretend to be one on the Internet.

toomuchtodo•58m ago

Many Americans drive a car every day, even though ~40k people a year die in car accidents. Why? Because the benefits outweigh the risk.

(my partner is on a GLP-1, and lost ~25 lbs in 3 months)

JumpCrisscross•51m ago

> I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop when it comes to GLP-1s

We know there are downsides. They’re just irrelevant compared to being obese. (Or alcoholic. Or, potentially, overweight.)

It might be a vitamin, where there literally aren’t any downsides. I’m sceptical of that. But to the degree there is mass cognitive bias in respect of GLP-1s, it’s against them. (I suspect these are sour grapes due to the drugs being unreachable for many.)

My frank concern is we’re separating into a social media addicted, unvaccinated and obese population on one hand and a wealthy, insured, disease free and fit one on the other. Those are dangerous class and physical divides to risk becoming heritable (socially, not genetically).

zemvpferreira•26m ago

GLP-1’s should make you less concerned in that case, they’re poised to become extremely affordable very soon. Ending the obesity epidemic will do more to bridge the class divide than anything I can practically imagine. Not to mention the other compulsions these drugs help moderate - alcohol, tobacco, gambling etc. It’s my best hope for worldwide quality of life improvement in the next 10 years.

JumpCrisscross•1m ago

> Ending the obesity epidemic will do more to bridge the class divide

My hope is the "waiting for the other shoe to drop" folks are just expressing sour grapes.

If it runs deeper and merges with the anti-vaxers, we've got a behavioural problem fuelling a class divide. That is my fear.

DharmaPolice•48m ago

I'm sure there will be negative side effects but the main outcome of these drugs is that you eat less. Many of us have trained ourselves to eat at a frequency and volume way beyond what is really required to keep our body functioning. This leads to weight gain in most people and thus is the focus but even independent of weight there are effects of continuously eating poor quality foods which are unlikely to be good. So I'm not surprised that there are all these miraculous sounding positive side effects to drugs which prevent most people from putting their metabolic system under near constant load.

When the side effects are better understood I suspect for the average person, eating less would be a net benefit to their overall health - _even if they don't lose any weight_.

coffeebeqn•39m ago

I’m sure some negative effects will be found but from what I understand lowering your weight outweighs (no pun intended) a lot of possible side effects. Closest thing to a miracle cure and quality of life improvement

45764986•4m ago

These drugs have been around for more than 10 years. If there were significant downsides, we probably would have seen them already.

bossyTeacher•4m ago

Given all the potential money, if they are issues, I expect it to go down like tobacco companies back in the days actively suppressing undesirable research by harassing researchers, influencing peer review journals or/and funding research casting doubt on the benefits of this drug. Chances are that any negative effects won't be obvious until it's too late. Look at microplastics, they have been around for just over a century and it's only now that we are starting to realize that they have several negative effects.

agentifysh•1h ago

is there an extract or can you get it from natural food? which have it ?

phantasmish•1h ago

GLP-1 agonists? Well they derived them from a lizard, so, uh… sort of? But no, no foods you eat are really going to have GLP-1 agonists in them, not to any meaningful degree anyway. Plus if you’re eating them they have to survive at least part of the digestive tract, which means you need even more since some of it’ll be lost.

Your body produces GLP-1, but it lives in the blood for like minutes. The innovation was finding a chemical that tickles the same receptors but survives in the body for days at a time.

cstrahan•1h ago

There may be some herbal supplements that impact GLP-1 release to some extent, but what is being talked about here are synthetic GLP-1 receptor agonists.

mrtesthah•1h ago

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221112471...

L-tryptophan > Indole > Raises GLP-1

ck2•1h ago

no GLP-1 generics until 2030

lots of people will miss out on benefits, like oh preventing death

our drug system is weird

exabrial•1h ago

Private people invested a lot of money to develop this and get it through testing. Allowing them to reap the benefits from their investment for a limited time is just fine.

It's not people couldn't also: Diet, exercise, choose veggies, eat more fiber, etc

isoprophlex•1h ago

"Sorry bro gonna let you die because, muh investments, you see"

Your closing remark is overly simplistic and offers a contradiction: if those things would work for these obese people, they wouldn't need GLPs.

exabrial•1h ago

The laws of thermodynamics apply to everyone equally.

asdff•1h ago

Where in thermodynamic principles does it suggest money ought to flow into the pockets of the few?

phantasmish•1h ago

The standard for medical interventions usually isn’t “could it work?” or “should it work?” but “does it work?”

This is why the efficacy of every single contraceptive method isn’t way higher than it is. Lots of them should work almost perfectly… but the harder they are to use correctly, the less effective they in-fact are.

asdff•1h ago

The public also invested a lot of money.

cess11•39m ago

Kind of weird to assume other people think it's fine to exchange human lives for money.

Is it ethical for me to pay someone to murder you? Does it matter if it costs me a large amount of money or not?

exabrial•2m ago

This is a great example of a straw-man attack.

k_roy•37m ago

Protecting it before generic is fine, but the pricing doesn't make sense.

If it's $1000 per month cost per person when it's the name brand, how many people are on it? At this point just the diabetics and people with really good insurance?

Wouldn't they make a hell of a lot more money selling it for $100 during their protected period to 1000x the people.

kube-system•18m ago

They have direct discount programs where they sell at ~ half price.

mrtesthah•1h ago

In theory you could supplement with L-tryptophan which is metabolized into indole which then raises GLP-1 production within enteroendocrine cells.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221112471...

matthewdgreen•48m ago

Or anything that boosts Akkermanskia.

Bender•47m ago

I use that to help me stay asleep. I also feed large amounts of it to horses and deer before, during and after 4th of July since everyone here launches mortars from their fields. Helps them chill.

degamad•45m ago

It's not obvious that there is a benefit here - the third sentence of the summary at the top says:

> Indole increased GLP-1 release during short exposures, but it reduced secretion over longer periods.

kube-system•17m ago

Compounded GLP-1s are still floating around in the US

jl6•1h ago

> However, the study authors emphasize that more research is needed to confirm these mechanisms and determine whether the survival benefit observed in this real-world analysis represents a direct anti-cancer effect or an indirect result of improved metabolic health

Given it’s an observational study, I would bet on the latter. It’s really hard to know you’ve controlled for all confounding factors, and there’s a strong null hypothesis because we know that losing weight can have huge and wide-ranging health benefits.

stavros•56m ago

Yeah, most GLP-1 benefits (or even adverse effects, like muscle loss) seem to be caused by the weight loss. We already knew obesity massively increases risk from a host of diseases, but GLP-1s are still treated with scepticism of the "oh but what about the side-effects we don't know about?!" variety?

ed•42m ago

Source?

There’s growing evidence of cardioprotective effects independent of weight loss.

Eg https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

> The cardioprotective effects of semaglutide were independent of baseline adiposity and weight loss and had only a small association with waist circumference, suggesting some mechanisms for benefit beyond adiposity reduction.

cyrusradfar•1m ago

Agreed.

I'm a big fan of intermittent and water fasting. Have seen things in my blood work that doctors would require me on meds to reverse. Outside of that, I can't speak to the positive impacts on my mood, and general ability to focus.

The simplest solution to a lot of problems is consuming less with the assumption that, most of us (maybe not you), have a lot of spare energy sitting around.

A lie that we don't unlearn as we grow up is we "require" three meals a day. This is true for children who need obscene amounts of energy to grow, but, not for us desk-bound adults.

In the end, giving the body a break to heal by fasting or just consuming significantly less is going to give your body energy to deal with other things.

andy_ppp•45m ago

If you eat less your stomach/whole body gets time to relax and repair?

pedalpete•37m ago

My understanding is that it slows the digestive process, so there isn't more "empty time to repair or relax".

But my thinking there may be naive.

andy_ppp•9m ago

I just know someone who skips breakfast and lunch on the jabs… maybe he eats dinner I’ve not checked.

Noaidi•45m ago

I do not like the framing. GLP-1 drugs help people lose weight, and it is the weight loss that lowers death rates in colon cancer[1]. This is making it sound like the drug itself is reducing cancer.

[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12672-025-03902-4

surfsvammel•41m ago

I don’t agree. They are not saying that.

It’s observational. They are saying they see correlation.

Your suggested mechanism is plausible, and likely, of course, but that might only be part of the effect.

I think it’s still valuable findings and can help direct further studies.

surfsvammel•43m ago

I am on GLP-1 (very low dose), and I’ve found that it seems to help me moderate my alcohol consumption as well. Maybe some thing like that could also be contributing to the effect.

richwater•36m ago

Is there evidence for addiction tendencies in general? Or is it something specific to alcohol?

surfsvammel•32m ago

I don’t know! Think I’ve seen a headline somewhere, but can’t remember where. Quick search should help you :)

To me, it’s anecdotal, of course, but I have same sense of being in control over alcohol intake as food intake.

Basically makes it much easier for me to avoid binging.

zemvpferreira•30m ago

I’m about to go to the cinema so I can’t find you references, but there’s a lot of anecdotal evidence at least of glp1’s curbing all sorts of addictive behaviour. I personally started Mounjaro last week and my coffee cravings have gone way, way down for the first time in my adult life.

SoftTalker•6m ago

I believe there is, I don't recall the source but have read that these drugs work by reducing cravings. So they have shown at least hints that they can work on any addictive behavior, not just overeating.

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