GLP-1 agonists in addiction therapy – review

Adult patients.

Individuals demonstrating problematic substance use or holding a formal diagnosis of SUD.

Preclinical studies (animal models: rodents, primates) and in vitro research.

Patients with non-substance addictive behaviours.

Studies involving patients with obesity or diabetes evaluated without an SUD-specific context.

Absence of GLP-1RA administration.

Studies evaluating only endogenous changes in GLP-1 concentrations induced by other factors.

Reporting of direct, empirical measures of addiction-related variables (e.g., changes in consumption quantity, days of abstinence, or validated craving scales).

Objective indicators (e.g., fMRI neural cue-reactivity to drug/alcohol stimuli, or addiction-related hospitalization rates in registry-based studies).

Lack of assessment regarding SUD-specific parameters (e.g., publications evaluating only weight reduction, glycemic control, or gastrointestinal adverse events).

Completed, original human clinical investigations with definitive quantitative outcomes.

RCTs, crossover designs, and secondary/post-hoc analyses of RCT data.

Large-scale retrospective or prospective observational cohort studies

Studies published between 2016 and 2026.

Systematic reviews and meta-analyses (utilized solely for manual reference searching).

Study protocols, preprints, and analyses of ongoing trial registries (e.g., Clinical-Trials.gov).

Case reports, letters to the editor, and narrative review articles.

Publications in languages other than English.