People taking Wegovy and Ozempic have lower risk of suicidal thoughts vs. older drugs, study finds

People taking Wegovy and Ozempic have lower risk of suicidal thoughts vs. older drugs, study finds

People taking the popular diabetes and obesity drugs Ozempic and Wegovy had a lower risk of suicidal thoughts than those taking other medications to treat the same conditions, a new federal study finds.

The research, funded by the National Institutes of Health, was published Friday and comes as European and U.S. regulators look into anecdotal reports that people taking the drug, semaglutide, had thoughts of self-harm.

NIH and Case Western Reserve University researchers analyzed electronic medical records from more than 1.8 million patients prescribed semaglutide or another drug to treat obesity or diabetes between 2017 and 2022. They included about 240,000 patients treated for obesity or being overweight and nearly 1.6 million patients treated for diabetes.

They found that people taking semaglutide had a 49% to 73% lower risk of first-time or recurring suicidal thoughts than those taking another drug for those conditions during a six-month follow-up period.

J’accuse!: Kinew uses French to fry interim Tory leader over alleged caucus subterfuge

NDP Premier Wab Kinew took a dig at the Progressive Conservatives’ leadership change while facing off with Obby Khan’s short-term replacement for the first time in question period Thursday.

Clock ticks down on destruction of records documenting residential school abuses

In less than a year, a private company is set to destroy the largest cache of records detailing the widespread abuse of Indigenous children at residential schools in Canada.

The destruction, which was ordered by an Ontario court in 2014 and later upheld by the Supreme Court, is set to take place on Sept. 19, 2027.

This countdown is igniting emotional conversations that seek to balance the immense historical value of the records alongside the confidentiality survivors were promised as part of the process of providing detailed testimony about abuses they’d suffered.

The records were created as part of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, a class-action settlement stemming from survivors who began suing the federal government in the late 1990s over the harm they’d been subjected to at residential schools.

Jets new backup Stevenson ‘stoked’ to be in tandem with Skinner

It didn’t take long to get the dirt on the newest member of the Winnipeg Jets.

Meet Clay Stevenson, who has no problem if you prefer to refer to him by his long-standing nickname of “Mud.”

“You know, Clay is in the mud, and there you go. That’s it, right there,” Stevenson said Wednesday with a laugh. “I got it in juniors when I was playing in Coquitlam, and kind of stuck ever since.”

Stevenson is now hoping to make a name for himself in a city that, quite fittingly, translates to “muddy water” in Cree. The 27-year-old from Alberta was placed on waivers by the Washington Capitals and claimed by the Jets, who were looking to clarify a goaltending situation which was as murky as the Red River.

Man who killed two Indigenous women, was accused of killing third, back in prison less than year after statutory release

A Winnipeg man convicted of killing two First Nations women more than a decade ago — with charges stayed in a third slaying — has been sent back to prison less than a year after he left under conditions.

Parole Board of Canada officials revoked 67-year-old Shawn Lamb’s statutory release after a hearing last week.

“Your actions are not beyond your control, yet you continue to wilfully make poor decisions that place the public at risk,” board member Arun Kundu-Thomsen wrote in a decision released this week.

Lamb gained statutory release — a legislated conditional release most federal inmates automatically qualify for after serving two-thirds of their sentence — in November last year and lived in several Ontario facilities for federal offenders.