Patients with type 2 diabetes treated with semaglutide had fewer tobacco-related medical encounters and fewer interventions to help them quit smoking than those who received other diabetes drugs, according to a study of electronic health records.

In the year after starting treatment, semaglutide users with a previous diagnosis of tobacco use disorder were up to 32% less likely to discuss tobacco use with a health care provider than those taking other diabetes medications. This was true even compared with those taking medications in the same class, known as GLP-1 receptor agonists, researchers reported in Annals of Internal Medicine.

They were also up to 68% less likely to receive prescriptions for smoking cessation and up to 21% less likely to receive smoking cessation counseling.

The findings were drawn from electronic health record data on nearly 229,000 patients, including 6,000 recipients of semaglutide.

The researchers called for clinical trials to evaluate the potential of semaglutide for use in smoking cessation to back up the findings from their sponsored by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. They noted earlier reports have suggested a reduced desire to smoke in patients treated with semaglutide, possibly related to a dampening of addictive reward effects in the brain.

The current study did not include data showing on whether patients actually stopped or decreased tobacco use after starting on the various drugs.

While the observed reduction in tobacco disorder-related encounters might suggest reductions in tobacco use or relapses, it "could also reflect other scenarios, such as a reduced willingness to seek help to quit smoking," the researchers acknowledged.

The classes of diabetes drugs reviewed for the study included insulin, metformin, DPP-4 inhibitors, SGLT-2 inhibitors, sulfonylureas, thiazolidinediones, and other GLP-1 receptor agonists.