You see, in Brazil, three or four out of every ten people have a fatty liver, which would give a total number much higher than 10 million. Not everyone, however, develops into MASH, steatohepatitis associated with metabolic dysfunction. It only happens to 20% to 25% of individuals with fat in their organs. These face the worst kind of trouble.
Silently, without causing a hint of pain, MASH traces a path capable of leading to cirrhosis or liver cancer. In fact, even before that, the liver is already becoming overwhelmed, losing useful area for work. And what a job! Now, the body has more than 500 types of services provided to our body. Each of them takes a terrible toll on their health when things start to go wrong, in a terrible snowball effect.
Returning to the good news that Anvisa made official yesterday, it is worth contextualizing it. Wegovy, from the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, is the second medicine approved worldwide to treat this public health problem. Years and years of searching for molecules to deal with MASH were unsuccessful. And Brazil is the third country to approve the drug for this purpose, after the United States and Canada — the Canadians released semaglutide 2.4 mg to resolve MASH last Friday.
Here and there, the measure was based on the first stage of the study ESSENCEwith 800 people from 34 countries and a strong Brazilian participation, with 48 patients. They were divided into two groups. One used semaglutide, Wegovy’s active ingredient, while another received fake medication. Everyone, however, was encouraged to do physical activity and have a balanced diet, including healthy recipe books and even a mat for yoga classes, for example.
At the end of 72 weeks, which is a year and a half, liver biopsies showed that inflammation had disappeared in 63% of patients treated with semaglutide and in only 34.3% of the placebo group — and, then, largely due to lifestyle changes.
Fibrosis, the scars formed in the organ as a response to inflammation, improved significantly in 37% of those who used semaglutide and in only 22.4% of those who received placebo.