Nearly 9 in 10 obese adults with early-stage fatty liver disease in a trial testing Eli Lilly’s experimental weight-loss drug retatrutide had their liver fat reduced to the point where they would no longer be classified as having the disease, according to data presented at a medical meeting.
“The implications of this trial are, we could wipe out the fat very early in the course of this disease before it becomes a real threat to the liver, and potentially reduce the long-term cardiac, metabolic, renal, and liver-related harm from obesity,” study leader Dr. Arun Sanyal of Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond said in a statement.
The 98 study volunteers were participating in a larger trial testing various doses of retatrutide for treating obesity. The data was presented on Monday at the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases annual meeting in Boston.
All of them had so-called metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD), in which fat accounts for 5% or more of liver weight.
When the study began, everyone had a liver fat content of at least 10%. By week 48, liver fat content had dropped below 5% in more than 85% of the patients.
More than 3 million cases of MASLD are diagnosed per year in the United States alone, and the condition is one of the major causes of end-stage liver disease and liver transplantation.
Many companies have tried and failed to come up with an effective treatment for the disease formerly known as NASH (nonalcoholic steatohepatitis).
Liver fat reductions in the study were related to reductions in body weight, waist circumference, abdominal fat, and improvements in insulin sensitivity, and blood levels of cholesterol and other lipids, the researchers reported.
“We are encouraged by these results and how they can potentially help tackle a disease that is currently without any approved therapies,” Sanyal said.
Read more about experimental fatty-liver drugs on Reuters.com
