July 29 (Reuters) - Smokers with type 2 diabetes taking

Novo Nordisk's Ozempic 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 published on Monday.

In the year after starting treatment, Ozempic users with a

previous diagnosis of tobacco use disorder were up to 32% less

likely to discuss tobacco use with a healthcare provider than

those taking other diabetes medications. This was true even

compared with those taking medicines 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 medication 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

Ozempic.

The researchers called for clinical trials to evaluate the

potential of the drug's active ingredient, semaglutide, for use

in smoking cessation to backup the findings from this study

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 nicotine's reward effects in the

brain. Novo's wildly popular weight-loss drug Wegovy has the

same active ingredient.

The current study did not include data showing 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 looked at in the study

included insulins, metformin, DPP-4 inhibitors, SGLT-2

inhibitors, sulfonylureas, thiazolidinediones and other GLP-1's

than Ozempic.