UK launches major trial testing semaglutide for alcohol addiction and obesity

In September, researchers across three major UK institutions will begin testing whether a drug already known for helping people lose weight might also quiet the craving for alcohol. The trial, called CURB—short for Controlling Unhealthy Relationships with Both alcohol and obesity—represents an attempt to treat two conditions that often arrive together and accelerate liver damage in tandem.

Semaglutide, marketed as Wegovy for weight loss, works by mimicking a natural hormone called GLP-1 that slows digestion and suppresses appetite. Scientists at the University of Plymouth, University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust, and the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre in Nottingham have secured £2.7 million in funding to explore whether the same mechanism that reduces hunger might also dampen the pull toward alcohol in people struggling with both dependencies. The four-year study will enroll 268 participants across England, Wales, and Scotland, each receiving either the drug or a placebo over 36 weeks while researchers measure changes in alcohol consumption, weight, liver function, and overall quality of life.

The timing reflects a genuine crisis. Alcohol use costs the NHS £5 billion annually and stands as the country's leading cause of liver disease. What makes the problem particularly intractable is that roughly half of those living with alcohol-related liver disease are also obese—and the two conditions feed each other, accelerating the deterioration of liver tissue and increasing the risk of death. Yet clinicians have no single treatment that addresses both at once. Patients receive counseling for one problem, medication for another, but nothing that targets the underlying mechanisms simultaneously.

Professor Ashwin Dhanda, who leads the liver medicine program at Plymouth, frames the gap plainly: the UK faces an obesity epidemic while clinicians see alcohol-dependent patients every day, many of them overweight. The absence of a dual-action treatment leaves tens of thousands of people and their families without an option that might actually work on both fronts. If semaglutide proves effective at reducing alcohol cravings while also promoting weight loss, it could reshape how these conditions are managed across the UK and beyond.

The trial design reflects careful thinking about what matters. Researchers have worked with people who have lived experience of alcohol dependence to shape the study, ensuring it remains practical and focused on participants' actual needs rather than abstract research goals. This input will continue to guide the work as it unfolds. The drug will be tested against a dummy treatment, the standard approach for determining whether observed improvements come from the medication itself or from the ritual and attention of being in a trial.

Professor Guruprasad Aithal, who directs the Nottingham research center, notes that the combination of alcohol and obesity acts synergistically to damage the liver—each one makes the other worse. Both conditions are notoriously difficult to treat with existing medicines or counseling alone. This trial represents what patients and experts recently identified as one of the top five research priorities in the field: a way to interrupt both problems at the same time. If it works, the implications extend far beyond individual patients. A successful outcome could establish a new standard of care, one that acknowledges the reality that these conditions often arrive together and require treatment that addresses them together.