Marissa Cole 
A review in JAMA Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery has pulled together what is known about GLP-1 drugs and obstructive sleep apnea, and its bottom line is a qualified one: the drugs work, and they work less well than CPAP. Across six meta-analyses the reduction in the apnea-hypopnea index ran from 5.7 to 21.9 events per … Read more
A network meta-analysis published in Endocrinology, Diabetes & Metabolism pooled 43 studies covering 932,380 patients and compared bariatric surgery against GLP-1 receptor agonists on hard cardiovascular outcomes. Surgery was associated with reductions in major adverse cardiovascular events, heart failure and myocardial infarction. The drugs were associated with a reduction in major adverse cardiovascular events but … Read more
A study published this month in Ophthalmology Retina looked for a link between GLP-1 drugs and non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy, a sudden and usually permanent loss of vision in one eye. Across 19,505 adults with type 2 diabetes it found 29 cases in total, and could not rule out either a real effect or … Read more
Metformin and a GLP-1 receptor agonist are one of the most common drug pairings in type 2 diabetes. A case report and literature review published in Kidney360 describes what happens when that combination goes wrong: a 59-year-old woman developed severe metformin-associated lactic acidosis alongside ketoacidosis, while her blood glucose stayed close to normal — the … Read more
A pharmacovigilance study published online in Gut and Liver on 2 September pooled the national adverse-event databases of the United States, Japan and Canada and found gastroesophageal reflux disease reported roughly two to five times more often for GLP-1 drugs than for a comparator diabetes drug class. The signal held in all three countries. It … Read more
A research brief published in Pediatrics on 4 September finds that GLP-1 prescribing to children aged 8 to 11 with obesity rose steeply between 2019 and 2026 while remaining uncommon: across 3,520,531 children in the dataset, 0.6% received a prescription. Every one of those prescriptions was off-label. The three drugs counted are labelled from age … Read more
A study of 63,215 patients with pre-existing neuropsychiatric conditions, published on 1 September, found semaglutide associated with broadly lower rates of neuropsychiatric events over two years than metformin, SGLT2 inhibitors or DPP-4 inhibitors. Within the semaglutide group, patients who reached higher doses had fewer such events afterwards — the inverse of the dose-toxicity pattern implied … Read more
Eli Lilly announced 52-week results on 31 August 2026 from two Phase 3b trials testing whether adding tirzepatide (Zepbound) to the psoriasis biologic ixekizumab (Taltz) works better than the biologic alone in adults who have psoriatic disease and obesity. It did, on both trials’ primary outcomes and by wide margins. But the primary outcomes were … Read more