Popular weight-loss drugs may lower desire for sweets, study reveal

Ozempic and Wegovy appear to improve people’s sensitivity to tastes, potentially lowering their desire for sweets, a new study suggests.

The active ingredient in the weight-loss medications, semaglutide, also appears to affect the way that the tongue and brain respond to sweet tastes, researchers reported Saturday at the Endocrine Society’s annual meeting in Boston.

“People with obesity often perceive tastes less ‘intensely,’ and they have an inherently elevated desire for sweet and energy-dense food,” said researcher Mojca Jensterle Sever, an endocrinologist with the University Medical Centre in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

For the study, researchers randomly assigned obese women to receive either semaglutide injections or a placebo.