New Therapies for MASH: What Healthcare Teams Need to Know

And we're talking about this since injectable semaglutide, Wigovi, is the first GLP-1 agonist approved for certain patients with MASH.

And before we dig in more, let's just review the spectrum of metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease.

This will

come into play when we talk about

treatment options.

And this is when there's excess fat in the liver in a person with at least one metabolic risk factor, such as insulin resistance or diabetes, high cholesterol, obesity, and that can cause fat creation in the liver or that steatotic liver disease or fatty liver disease.

And then if it's left untreated, the disease progresses.

And then we have metabolic dysfunction associated steatohepatitis, or MASH.

And this is when the fat buildup leads to inflammation and damage to the liver cells.

And then it can progress to fibrosis, or this is when scar tissue starts to replace that normal tissue in the liver.

and eventually can progress to cirrhosis when scarring is extensive, severe, and it usually can't be reversed.

Or it can also lead to liver cancer.

So you can see why it's important to try to find it early and to treat this early.

And we're hearing more about metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease because it's a leading cause of chronic liver disease.

In fact, about one in four adults in the U.S. have MASLD, and about 15 million adults in the U.S. have MASH.

So it's important to note that the prevalence is rising.

And this increase goes hand in hand with increases in the metabolic risk factor.

So many may not know they have this since patients with MASH usually do not have symptoms.

And we rely on screening when patients have these risk factors.

So diabetes and obesity seem to have the most impact on the history of MASLD and progression to MASH.