• Posted January 21, 2026

Ozempic Improves Knee Replacement Outcomes Among People With Type 2 Diabetes

Even a brief round of Ozempic can help people with type 2 diabetes have a more successful knee replacement surgery, a new study says.

Patients given Ozempic just a few months prior to their knee replacement surgery had fewer complications after the procedure, researchers recently reported in The Journal of Arthroplasty.

"Our team found that three months of semaglutide use prior to surgery leads to markedly fewer minor and severe complications,” senior researcher Dr. Lee Rubin said in a news release. He’s a professor of orthopedics and rehabilitation at Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut.

People with type 2 diabetes are nearly twice as likely to have osteoarthritis compared to non-diabetics, researchers said in background notes.

The prevalence of type 2 diabetes among joint replacement patients is about 20%, nearly twice as high as the prevalence of diabetes in the general population, researchers noted.

Many of these patients are also obese, making knee replacement surgery and recuperation from it more difficult, researchers said.

For the new study, researchers analyzed data for knee replacement patients with type 2 diabetes who had been taking semaglutide for varying amounts of time – as little as less than a month, as long as up to a year. The researchers compared them to similar patients not taking semaglutide.

Semaglutide is a GLP-1 drug that was initially developed to treat type 2 diabetes, for which it is sold under the brand name Ozempic. The drug was also approved later for weight loss, under the brand name Wegovy.

Results showed that taking semaglutide for at least two to three months reduced the risk of serious complications between 55% to 72%. These complications included infection, sepsis, blood clots, heart problems and pancreatitis.

Further, taking semaglutide for even less than a month reduced a patient’s risk of minor complications like wound issues, bleeding, kidney problems and pneumonia. Risk of these complications fell between 73% and 84% following treatment with semaglutide.

Semaglutide might help these patients by stabilizing blood sugar, promoting weight loss and reducing inflammation, researchers speculated.

“The results open a new avenue for preoperative health optimization for patients with diabetes seeking joint replacement and underscores the importance of multidisciplinary collaboration among specialists,” Rubin said.

“By working with primary care physicians, endocrinologists and nurse navigators, we can better prepare our diabetic patients for surgery, leading to improved recovery and overall health outcomes,” he added.

More information

The American Society of Anesthesiologists has more on taking GLP-1 drugs before surgery.

SOURCES: Yale School of Medicine, news release, Jan. 9, 2026; The Journal of Arthroplasty, December 2025