Unexpected Benefit of Ozempic & Wegovy: Lower Breast Cancer Risk by 30%
A groundbreaking study has unveiled an unexpected advantage of widely-used weight-loss medications such as Ozempic and Wegovy. These drugs may significantly lower the risk of breast cancer in women with excess weight. The research, involving over 110,000 women, discovered that those taking GLP-1 medications — a drug class that includes semaglutide-based Ozempic and Wegovy, as well as tirzepatide-based Mounjaro and Zepbound — were approximately 30% less likely to develop breast cancer compared to women not using these drugs.
The pivotal findings were presented at the 2026 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting and concurrently published in the journal JCO Oncology Practice. The study was spearheaded by Dr. Elizabeth McDonald, a professor of radiology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. It analyzed health records from 111,646 women aged 45 to 80 with a BMI of 25 or above, all of whom had undergone breast imaging at Penn Medicine between January 2022 and June 2025.
Researchers propose that several biological mechanisms may be at play, including the drugs’ capacity to reduce inflammation and modify pathways related to cancer development. The results have already sparked plans for a dedicated clinical trial to explore whether GLP-1 drugs could be a viable breast cancer prevention strategy. “GLP-1 medications are intriguing from a cancer research perspective because they weren’t designed for cancer therapy, but they do affect many different targets and pathways associated with cancer development,” said Dr. McDonald.
Source: ScienceDaily — Ozempic and similar weight-loss drugs linked to 30% lower breast cancer risk