BARCELONA, Spain — People with asthma who started semaglutide, the drug sold as Ozempic and Wegovy, had nearly 40% fewer attacks than similar patients on older diabetes pills, researchers told a European lung meeting this week.

The finding comes from real-world U.K. electronic health records, not a randomized trial. Lead investigator Chloe Bloom, a clinical associate professor in respiratory epidemiology at Imperial College London's National Heart and Lung Institute, said the signal was strongest for semaglutide and for asthma rather than chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. "The effect was strongest with semaglutide especially in people with asthma, where use of semaglutide appears to be associated with nearly a 40% reduction in asthma attacks. Semaglutide also led to a 20% reduction in COPD flare-ups," she said in a European Respiratory Society statement.

Bloom's team ran four parallel analyses, each with about 20,000 to 22,000 adults who newly started a GLP-1 receptor agonist or a sulfonylurea. The patients already had asthma or COPD and were taking the shots or pills for diabetes or weight. Attacks were counted as a short course of oral steroids, an emergency visit, a hospital stay or death. Across GLP-1 drugs as a class, exacerbations were about 14% lower than with sulfonylureas,........

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