Ozempic and other drugs like it have proved powerful at regulating blood sugar and driving weight loss. Now, scientists are exploring whether they might be just as transformative in treating a wide range of other conditions, from addiction and liver disease to a common cause of infertility.

“It’s like a snowball that turned into an avalanche,” says Lindsay Allen, a health economist at Northwestern Medicine. As the drugs gain momentum, “they’re leaving behind them this completely reshaped landscape”.