A study of 111,646 women ages 45 to 80, presented at the 2026 ASCO meeting and led by University of Pennsylvania radiology professor Elizabeth McDonald, MD, PhD, links GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy to a lower breast cancer rate.
“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, so we’re eager to study them in this context,” McDonald said.
ABC News chief medical correspondent Tara Narula, MD, summarized the headline number: “They found that those women on GLP-1s had a reduced risk of developing breast cancer by about 30%.” If borne out, McDonald said, “the benefits would be transformative for women’s health.”
Why It Might Work
“When you think about what [GLP-1 medications] do, reduce weight, reduce inflammation and help with insulin sensitivity, it makes sense that that could potentially have an effect on the risk of breast cancer,” Narula said. The interest extends beyond this one study: “I think we’re going to see potential usefulness for cancer survivorship and maybe cancer prevention with some of these newer medications coming on the market,” said Bernard Fuemmeler, PhD, associate director for population sciences at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Why It’s Not Time to Change Anything
McDonald was careful about the limits. “While our study was observational and does not definitively confirm an association between GLP-1 medications and reduced breast cancer incidence, it does add to the growing body of evidence suggesting that it’s worth investigating these weight-loss drugs as potential cancer prevention tools,” she said. Narula put it more bluntly, calling the study “hypothesis-generating” rather than “practice-changing.”
“Ultimately, we want to find better options to prevent breast cancer,” McDonald said. “It’s been encouraging to see the survival rates for breast cancer improve over recent decades, and we’d love to see the same gains in prevention.” If you’re already on a GLP-1, this changes nothing about why you take it; if you’re weighing one, it’s worth raising with your doctor.
Joseph has been writing and editing for a wide variety of publications over the last decade. He loves covering news in the health and wellness space and has written extensively about all aspects of wellness for a wide range of publications.
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