Swedish Study Links Semaglutide to Lower Hospitalization Risk in Bipolar Disorder

A nationwide Swedish cohort study covering people with bipolar disorder between 2009 and 2024 found that those who used semaglutide, a GLP-1 receptor agonist drug best known under brand names like Ozempic and Wegovy, had a 21 percent lower risk of psychiatric hospitalization and a 17 percent lower risk of bipolar relapse compared with those who did not use the drug. The study, published in the journal Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, drew on Sweden's national health registers and included 14,694 people with bipolar disorder, of whom 5,200 had used a GLP-1 receptor agonist.

Notably, researchers found that the reduced hospitalization risk was specific to semaglutide and was not observed with other GLP-1 receptor agonist drugs in the same class, suggesting the effect may not be a simple class-wide phenomenon. The authors said the findings warrant further investigation into how semaglutide might influence psychiatric outcomes in people with bipolar disorder, cautioning that the observational nature of the study means it cannot establish that the drug directly causes the reduced risk.