Study finds lower risk of heart attacks and strokes in people with type 2 diabetes
- Real-world data show semaglutide (Ozempic/Wegovy) and tirzepatide (Mounjaro/Zepbound) are linked with lower risk of major heart problems in people with type 2 diabetes.
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Researchers used national insurance claims and trial emulation to compare cardiovascular outcomes in clinical practice.
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Both drugs offered similar heart protection when compared head-to-head, supporting their use beyond weight control.
Injectable medications originally developed to treat type 2 diabetes and aid weight loss, like semaglutide and tirzepatide, are increasingly showing benefits that go beyond the scale.
Recent research suggests these drugs may also help protect the heart a key concern for many people living with diabetes and obesity, who face elevated risks of heart attack, stroke, and cardiovascular death.
These findings come from a large study published in Nature Medicine that looked closely at cardiovascular outcomes for people taking these medications in everyday clinical care, not just in tightly controlled lab settings.
Both substances have a cardioprotective effect, researcher Dr. Nils Krger said in a news release. Our data show that the benefits emerge from early on, indicating that the effect goes beyond weight loss alone.
The study
To understand how these drugs perform in the real world, researchers analyzed insurance billing and prescription data from U.S. health care programs between 2018 and 2025.
Instead of conducting a traditional randomized clinical trial, they emulated the design of established cardiovascular outcome trials using observational data a method that lets scientists approximate trial conditions while including more diverse patients.
In practice, this meant comparing large groups of adults with type 2 diabetes who were prescribed semaglutide or tirzepatide with others taking different diabetes medications with known neutral cardiovascular effects (like sitagliptin or dulaglutide).
The research team carefully matched patients on factors such as age, health history, and diabetes severity using statistical techniques to make the comparisons as fair as possible.
Finally, the study even compared semaglutide directly with tirzepatide to see if one drug was significantly better than the other at reducing the risk of major heart problems.
The results
The results showed meaningful cardiovascular benefits for both medications:
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Semaglutide was associated with about an 18% lower risk of serious events like heart attack and stroke when compared with a medication (sitagliptin) that doesnt influence heart risk.
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Tirzepatide was linked with a 13% lower risk of heart attack, stroke, or death compared with dulaglutide, another common treatment.
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When semaglutide and tirzepatide were directly compared, there were only small differences in their heart-protective effects suggesting that both provide similar benefits in routine practice.
Importantly, the protective effects appeared to show up early and were likely not just because people lost weight. Scientists think the drugs might influence heart risk through other biological pathways, though exactly how remains an area of active investigation.
Bottom line: For people with type 2 diabetes, especially those at risk of heart disease, semaglutide and tirzepatide may offer powerful advantages that stretch beyond glucose control and weight loss potentially helping protect the heart itself.
"We hope our findings will provide clarity to physicians about how these new medications perform in clinical practice, Dr. Krger said. Our transparent study design is also intended to support open scientific discussion about whether and how modern GLP-1 drugs should become part of the standard therapeutic repertoire in cardiovascular medicine.
Posted: 2025-12-17 18:49:21
