Novo Nordisk to test weight-loss drugs’ effect on alcohol use and liver disease

Novo Nordisk is trialling its weight-loss drugs to explore if they can reduce alcohol intake and treat alcoholic liver disease, as it seeks to expand the uses of the blockbuster treatments.

The Danish pharmaceutical company has started recruitment for a mid-stage trial looking at whether an estimated 240 patients using semaglutide, the active ingredient in Wegovy, and cagrilintide, an ingredient in another Novo Nordisk drug in development for weight loss, can treat liver damage and reduce alcohol use in participants with alcoholic liver disease.

Novo Nordisk is already assessing semaglutide’s effects in liver disease linked to obesity — metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis — but this is the first study to assess the effectiveness of the new generation of weight-loss treatments on alcoholic liver disease, which kills more than 30,000 Americans a year.

The phase-two trial, set to finish in June 2025, opens up the possibility of offering a treatment for a disease with few other options. Treatments for alcoholic liver disease have remained largely unchanged for the past four decades, and rely heavily on abstinence combined with nutrition therapy and steroids. The trial, which was first reported by Bloomberg, was posted on the Clinicaltrials.gov database last week.

The drug has shown health benefits beyond weight loss. A trial in November showed that it could reduce the risk of death in patient with cardiovascular disease by 18 per cent.

New analysis of this data on Tuesday showed users of the drug could sustain weight loss over four years and gain cardiovascular benefits regardless of their weight. Novo Nordisk is also exploring the benefits of semaglutide in Alzheimer’s disease.

The company is relying on expanding the use cases for its drug to convince health systems to adopt them more broadly. In the US, the Food and Drug Administration approved Wegovy for use to lower the risk of heart disease in March, enabling it to be covered by Medicare Part D plans, which provide coverage for more than 50mn Americans.

However, health systems in Europe are struggling to afford the high costs of the drug. The UK has limited its use to two years, and Denmark, where Novo Nordisk is based, only provides the drug privately.

Novo Nordisk declined to comment.

Letter in response to this article:

We cannot medicate our way out of this problem / From Dr Nicholas Syhler, Co-founder, Embla, London W1, UK