People with asthma who started semaglutide had close to 40% fewer asthma attacks than similar people who started an older diabetes drug, according to research from Imperial College London announced on 8 September 2026 at the European Respiratory Society Congress in Barcelona. People with COPD on semaglutide had 20% fewer flare ups.
Here is the practical line for a reader. If you have asthma or COPD and you already qualify for a GLP-1 drug because of type 2 diabetes or obesity, it is reasonable to ask your doctor whether semaglutide in particular is the right choice for you. If you do not already qualify, this is not a reason to go looking for one. The lead researcher says so herself.
Key takeaways
- Semaglutide was linked to nearly 40% fewer asthma attacks and 20% fewer COPD flare ups compared with an older diabetes medicine.
- This is health records data presented at a conference, not a trial, and the researchers say it should not change treatment decisions on its own.
- The comparison drug causes weight gain, which makes it hard to separate a lung effect from a weight effect.
What the study found
The work was led by Professor Chloe Bloom, Clinical Associate Professor in Respiratory Epidemiology at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London, and presented by Dr Bohee Lee.
Using UK electronic medical records, the team ran four parallel studies. Each one looked at between 20,000 and 22,000 people who started either a GLP-1 treatment or another type of diabetes medication called a sulfonylurea, according to the ERS release.
Across those studies, people with asthma or COPD who were prescribed GLP-1 therapies had fewer attacks and flare ups than similar people on the other diabetes medicines. Bloom said the effect “was strongest with semaglutide especially in people with asthma.”
Bloom also set the limit on her own result. “The findings from this study are encouraging, but they should not change treatment decisions on their own,” she said. “People with asthma or COPD should not start GLP-1 receptor agonists specifically for their lung condition outside current prescribing guidance.”
The figures released are relative reductions. The number of attacks in each group was not part of the announcement.
Dr. Kumar’s take
The comparison is the whole story here, and it is the part the headlines skip.
Semaglutide was not measured against a placebo. It was measured against a sulfonylurea, a class of diabetes drug that reliably causes weight gain. So one group was losing weight and the other group was gaining it. Excess weight worsens asthma control through mechanics, reflux, and inflammation, all of which improve when weight comes down. That difference in weight is an alternative explanation for the gap, one that needs no special action on the airway at all.
The second soft spot is the semaglutide versus other GLP-1 comparison. Splitting an observational dataset into drug by drug subgroups is exactly the setting where differences appear that do not survive a real trial. Which GLP-1 a UK patient ended up on in these years reflects prescribing rules, cost, and who was sick enough to qualify, and those things track with asthma severity too.
None of that makes the result useless. It makes it a different result than the one being reported. The usable finding is a reframing: obesity and metabolic disease are treatable drivers of asthma attacks, and they go unaddressed in respiratory clinics as a matter of routine. Dr Alexander Mathioudakis, who was not involved in the work, made the same point, calling obesity and metabolic dysfunction “often under-recognised as problems that can and should be addressed.”
That is a real gap in care. It is not the same as saying semaglutide is an asthma drug.
What it means for you
If you have asthma or COPD and you are already on a GLP-1, or one has been offered to you for diabetes or weight, this is a fair question for your next appointment: is semaglutide the right one for me, given my lungs? Your doctor is weighing sugar control, kidney and heart risk, side effects, and cost alongside this, so the answer may still be a different drug.
If you have asthma and no diabetes or obesity, nothing here applies to you yet. Confirming this needs a trial that measures asthma attacks on purpose, and none has been run.
And if you have asthma and carry extra weight, the more direct takeaway is that weight is part of your asthma care, not a separate problem to deal with later. That conversation is worth having whether or not a GLP-1 is on the table.