Top 10 PubMed Studies on GLP-1 Outcomes in Cancer Survivors (2026)

Sukumar 2026 is the most directly relevant cancer-survivor cohort published to date. The MD Anderson team analyzed weight-loss trajectories and downstream clinical outcomes in breast cancer survivors prescribed GLP-1 receptor agonists after completion of primary treatment. The cohort design captures patients who started semaglutide or tirzepatide for weight gain related to chemotherapy, aromatase inhibitors, or tamoxifen — a population systematically excluded from STEP and SURMOUNT. Findings: meaningful weight loss occurred in survivors but the magnitude and trajectory differed from registration-trial benchmarks. Observational design, no placebo arm.

PMID 41677473 ↗DOI 10.1158/2767-9764.CRC-25-0554 ↗

Cornelio 2026 is the first real-world cardiovascular outcomes analysis dedicated to women with both breast cancer and type 2 diabetes who initiated a GLP-1 receptor agonist. The analysis pulls from a large administrative claims dataset and uses propensity-score methods to compare GLP-1 initiators against non-GLP-1 antidiabetic controls. The signal aligns with the broader SELECT and LEADER literature: GLP-1 use in this dual-burden population is associated with reduced cardiovascular events. Important caveats: observational design, confounding by indication, and breast cancer stage was incompletely captured. Most useful as a hypothesis-generating real-world bridge.

PMID 41801847 ↗DOI 10.1002/phar.70130 ↗

Wooster 2025 from the Columbia breast oncology group examined patterns of weight-management treatment utilization (including GLP-1 prescriptions, bariatric surgery, and behavioral interventions) in patients with breast cancer and assessed downstream cardiovascular events. The analysis frames a central survivorship question: do the patients who actually get weight-management therapy after breast cancer experience lower cardiovascular morbidity than those who do not, and to what extent is that mediated by the treatment choice. The dataset captured prescription-fill data through 2023, before GLP-1 access expanded sharply, so generalizability to the current treatment landscape is limited.

PMID 40360855 ↗DOI 10.1007/s10549-025-07714-6 ↗

Lopez 2026 leveraged SEER-Medicare 2007-2015 to compare older women with and without a history of obesity-related cancers, examining whether obesity-medication exposure modified cardiovascular disease incidence. The cohort predates the modern GLP-1 era — the obesity-medication mix is dominated by older agents — so this is the historical control rather than the current state. Its value is in establishing that older women with prior obesity-related cancer have measurably elevated cardiovascular risk and that obesity-medication use was both rare and unevenly distributed. Sets the baseline that the GLP-1 era is now disrupting.

PMID 42083112 ↗DOI 10.1002/oby.70211 ↗

Jung 2025 used the Korean National Health Insurance Service cohort to quantify how post-diagnosis weight change affects cardiovascular disease incidence in breast cancer survivors. Both weight gain and substantial weight loss were associated with elevated cardiovascular risk relative to weight stability, producing a U-shaped curve. The study does not test any pharmacotherapy, but it is the strongest population-level evidence that controlled weight management after breast cancer matters cardiometabolically — and the closest natural-experiment proxy for what GLP-1-driven, controlled weight loss might deliver.

PMID 39762706 ↗DOI 10.1007/s10549-024-07594-2 ↗

Howard 2026 in JAMA Oncology is the clearest editorial framing of how oncology should integrate GLP-1 receptor agonists and other highly effective obesity therapies across the cancer continuum — prevention, active treatment, and survivorship. The authors argue that the field has been slow to translate STEP and SURMOUNT efficacy into cancer-care pathways and outline the trials, guidelines, and prior-authorization barriers that need to move. Not an empirical study, but the single most-cited framing piece of 2026 for the survivorship use case, and the document most likely to be referenced by oncology weight-management programs writing local protocols.

PMID 41954902 ↗DOI 10.1001/jamaoncol.2026.0260 ↗

Hundal 2026 in the ASCO Educational Book is the canonical survivorship-curriculum chapter on breast cancer aftercare. It integrates lifestyle, weight management (including GLP-1 receptor agonists), and psychological health into a single care framework and is one of the clearest places where the practicing oncologist now sees GLP-1s named as a survivorship tool rather than purely an obesity-medicine drug. Useful as the credentialed-source citation when survivors ask whether ASCO endorses GLP-1 use after breast cancer — it stops short of a guideline but reflects mainstream educational positioning.

PMID 42127339 ↗DOI 10.1200/EDBK-26-517396 ↗

Fore-Williams 2026 is the only review focused specifically on tamoxifen-associated weight gain — a problem that affects a large share of premenopausal breast cancer survivors on five to ten years of endocrine therapy. The authors catalog lifestyle approaches and pharmacotherapy options including GLP-1 receptor agonists, with explicit discussion of how the timing of intervention interacts with ongoing endocrine therapy. The review is honest about the gap between obesity-trial efficacy and tamoxifen-cohort evidence: there is no randomized data in this exact population. Useful as a practical clinical roadmap for advanced-practice oncology nurses managing weight gain on adjuvant tamoxifen.

PMID 42170166 ↗DOI 10.6004/jadpro.2026.17.3.3 ↗

Pahulu 2026 is a JNCI Cancer Spectrum systematic review covering diet, nutrition, and hormone therapy for prostate cancer — the closest published synthesis to the ADT-and-weight problem this list is built around. Androgen-deprivation therapy reliably drives visceral adiposity gain, sarcopenia, insulin resistance, and elevated cardiovascular mortality. The authors map the existing intervention evidence, note the absence of any dedicated GLP-1 randomized trial in ADT-treated men, and explicitly recommend future interventional work using incretin-based therapies. Functions as the citation that says the field acknowledges the gap and is calling for trials.

PMID 41703670 ↗DOI 10.1093/jncics/pkag014 ↗

Kajitani 2020 is included as the clinical-phenotype anchor for the prostate-survivor section. A patient who underwent bilateral orchiectomy for prostate cancer developed severe visceral obesity, hepatic steatosis, and new-onset type 2 diabetes — a compressed, extreme version of the metabolic trajectory that surgical or pharmacologic androgen deprivation produces over years. The case underscores the cardiometabolic stakes of the survivor population that the field is now beginning to study with GLP-1 receptor agonists. Single case, no GLP-1 intervention reported, but a load-bearing illustration of why this question matters.

PMID 32522924 ↗DOI 10.2169/internalmedicine.4653-20 ↗