Liver disease is newest weight loss drug use

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Hello! Pharmaceutical companies aren’t just competing to develop drugs to treat obesity. They are also racing to expand the uses of these weight loss treatments. severe form of liver disease.

Some pharmaceutical companies, including market heavyweights Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, have already They demonstrated the drug’s ability to help patients lose unwanted weight and regulate blood sugar levels.

They now aim to prove that this treatment may have additional health benefits. Doing so could unlock more revenue from a burgeoning market and expand limited insurance coverage for treatments, most of which cost nearly $1,000 a month.

Competition intensified on Monday after Denmark-based pharmaceutical company Zealand Pharma and its partner Boehringer Ingelheim announced positive results in a mid-stage trial testing their drug. Sabodutid, patients with metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis, or MASH. This condition is characterized by excessive fat accumulation and inflammation in the liver, which can lead to liver scarring and fibrosis.

Sulbodutide helps weight loss in overweight or obese patients up to 19% of body weight Another phase 2 trial is just one of a long list of drugs that could eventually become a treatment for MASH.

Ann update to STAT obesity drug tracker At least 23 of the 105 weight-loss drugs in development or on the market, or about a fifth, are being investigated for their ability to treat the condition, Monday’s announcement revealed.

So why are pharmaceutical companies focused on this particular type of liver disease? First, there are the following: no medicine Approved to directly target MASH. The drugs being tested may not cure the symptoms, but their effects may be far-reaching. 115 million people The world is affected by MASH and it is estimated that 3%~5% According to some studies, 80% of adults in the United States suffer from this condition.

New data highlights the potential for weight loss drugs to help. According to Zealand Pharma, up to 83% of trial participants treated with sulvodutide had significant disease improvement with no worsening of liver scarring after 48 weeks, compared to the group receiving a placebo. It was 18.2%.

Sulbodutide also met one of the trial’s secondary objectives, which was to show a “statistically significant” improvement in liver scarring. Also, even at higher doses, no unexpected safety or tolerability issues occurred among people receiving the drug.

Riley Securities analyst Mayank Mamtani said the data “significantly exceeded investors’ expectations” and appears to be an improvement over interim trial data that Eli Lilly released earlier this month. said.

Approximately 74% of patients who received the highest dose of Eli Lilly’s drug tirzepatide were free of MASH after one year with no worsening of liver scarring. This compares to about 13% of people who received a placebo.

The extent to which the drug reduced liver scarring, the second objective of the trial, was less clear. Eli Lilly did not say whether tirzepatide achieved that goal, but the company said the drug’s effectiveness in reducing scarring was “clinically meaningful” at all doses.

However, Jefferies analysts cautioned in a note Monday that Eli Lilly’s trial included patients with more severe liver scarring compared to Zealand Pharma’s study. That may explain the difference in the data.

The two drugs work differently. Zealand Pharma’s treatment mimics a gut hormone called GLP-1, which suppresses appetite, but also mimics another hormone called glucagon. Lilly’s tirzepatide, on the other hand, targets GLP-1 and another hormone called GIP.

It is too early to tell whether one drug is better than another in treating MASH. It will likely be many years before Eli Lilly and Zealand Pharma’s drug reaches the market as a treatment for fatty liver disease.

Boehringer Ingelheim told Reuters on Monday that the company expects sulbodutide to be launched as a treatment for MASH, or obesity. 2027 or 2028subject to good test data.

Complete results from both Eli Lilly and Zealand Pharma’s mid-stage trials are expected to be presented at this year’s medical conference. We also have to wait for data from other drug companies. Novo Nordisk is studying semaglutide, also known as Wegovy for weight loss and Ozempic for diabetes, in late-stage trials for the treatment of MASH.

But one biotech company may be the first to successfully bring a MASH drug to market. The Food and Drug Administration will decide whether to approve the drug, called “MASH.” Resmetirom From Madrigal Pharmaceuticals on March 14th.

It’s been a tough week for Change Healthcare.

The payment and revenue cycle management solutions company has been in business since parent company UnitedHealth Group revealed that “suspected nation-state affiliated” cybersecurity attackers had accessed parts of its information technology network. announced that its systems were down for seven consecutive days. last week.

The scope and nature of the breach remains unclear, but UnitedHealth said it isolated and disconnected affected systems “immediately upon detecting” the threat, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday.

The company did not say exactly which Change Healthcare systems were disrupted by the attack, but the breach caused problems across health systems and pharmacies at companies like CVS Health and Walgreens.

UnitedHealth told CNBC late Monday that more than 90% of all U.S. pharmacies have set up modified electronic claims processing workarounds to reduce the impact of the outage, and the remaining pharmacies are implementing solutions offline. He said he was setting it up.

For consumers like Cary Blazeman, the confusion is a headache.

Blazerman tried to pick up a prescription at a Vons pharmacy in Palm Springs, Calif., on Saturday, but was told the pharmacy had not received any correspondence from his doctor. Even if it had been in that location, it would not have been covered by insurance, the employees said.

“It’s like, ‘Okay, what do we do now?’ And they’re like, ‘We don’t know,'” Blazerman said in an interview with CNBC.

By Monday, Blazerman said, the pharmacy had set up workarounds to help contact some insurance companies, but not all. He said he was going to go back to the doctor and get a paper copy of the prescription, take it back to the pharmacy and hope for the best.

His immediate concern, he said, is not whether his information has been compromised, but whether people who really need the medication will have access to it. Especially patients who have more severe symptoms than me.

“I’m mobile, so I can patrol if I need to, and I can pay in cash if I need to, but there are a lot of people who can’t do that,” he said.

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