MONDAY, June 3, 2024 (HealthDay News) — Ozempic and Wegovy appear to improve people’s sensitivity to flavors, which could reduce their desire to eat sweets, a new study suggests.
The active ingredient in weight-loss drugs, semaglutide, also appears to affect the way 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 flavors less ‘intensely,’ and have an inherently high desire for sweet, energy-dense foods,” said researcher Mojca Jensterle Sever, an endocrinologist at the University Medical Center in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
In the study, researchers randomly assigned obese women to receive semaglutide injections or a placebo.
For four months, the researchers measured the participants’ taste sensitivity using strips containing different concentrations of flavors.
They also used MRIs to measure brain responses to a sweet solution dripped onto their tongues, both before and after the women ate a standard meal.
The researchers also took tissue samples to evaluate genetic activity in the participants’ tongues.
Women who received semaglutide experienced changes in their perception of taste, in the way their taste bud genes were expressed, and in the way their brains responded to sweets.
The changes match those seen in animal studies, Jensterle Sever said.
“Doctors will likely correlate the findings with their patients’ reports of changes in desire for certain foods, which go beyond general changes in appetite and satiety that help them lose weight,” Jensterle Sever said. in a press release from the meeting.
However, Jensterle Sever added that more research is needed, given that the study was conducted in a laboratory setting and taste perception can vary significantly from person to person.
Future studies will clarify whether semaglutide’s effectiveness in treating obesity is a “matter of taste,” Jensterle Sever concluded.
Findings presented at medical meetings should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.
More information
The National Institutes of Health has more information about semaglutide.
SOURCE: The Endocrine Society, press release, June 1, 2024
