Mounjaro ingredient cuts alcohol intake: Research

An ingredient in the prescription diabetes drug Mounjaro was found to reduce alcohol intake in rodents, according to a recent study.

In the study, published in early January in the medical journal eBioMedicine, researchers in Sweden, South Carolina and Brazil looked at how the ingredient, tirzepatide, affected rodents. The researchers found that alcohol’s “rewarding properties” were lessened by the ingredient and that behaviors including the voluntary consumption of alcohol and binge drinking dropped.

Rodents who received tirzepatide ingested less than 50 percent of the amount of alcohol that a control group had ingested, according to an analysis from Neuroscience News.com.

“In summary, our findings indicate that tirzepatide influences alcohol-related responses in ways that appear to have clinical potential. Tirzepatide consistently reduced alcohol intake across different drinking paradigms and both sexes without signs of tolerance development,” the researchers wrote.

“Perhaps more significantly, tirzepatide’s effects on relapse behaviours suggest it might help decrease relapse vulnerability, a finding that could prove important for therapeutic applications,” they added.

Mounjaro is an injectable GLP-1 medication, made by Eli Lilly, that is approved for lowering blood sugar in people with type 2 diabetes.

Another study, published in February of last year, suggested that using other GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy could result in less alcohol consumption. 

In a survey released over the summer from Gallup, 54 percent of American adults said they consumed alcohol, a historic low for the survey’s 90-year history.