Tesamorelin, a peptide that prompts the body to release its own growth hormone, had already been approved to reduce visceral belly fat in HIV patients. Researchers wanted to know whether it could also clear fat out of the liver itself.
In a peer-reviewed, randomized, placebo-controlled trial of 61 HIV-positive adults with excess liver fat, those given daily tesamorelin injections for twelve months saw their liver fat fraction drop by 4.1 percentage points more than the placebo group, a 37 percent relative reduction, and more than a third reached a level no longer considered fatty liver disease.
Liver scarring advanced in 10.5 percent of the tesamorelin group against 37.5 percent on placebo, though the drug did not reverse scarring already there. The trial ran for one year in 61 people, and whether the benefit holds up over longer use, or in people without HIV, is still being studied.
Read the original study
Stanley et al., Lancet HIV, 2019 · doi.org/10.1016/S2352-3018(19)30338-8
Aimed at belly fat, it reached the liver too.
Source
- Stanley, T. L., Fourman, L. T., Feldpausch, M. N., Purdy, J., Zheng, I., Pan, C. S., Aepfelbacher, J., Buckless, C., Tsao, A., Kellogg, A., Branch, K., Lee, H., Liu, C.-Y., Corey, K. E., Chung, R. T., Torriani, M., Kleiner, D. E., Hadigan, C. M., & Grinspoon, S. K. (2019). Effects of tesamorelin on non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in HIV: a randomised, double-blind, multicentre trial. The Lancet HIV, 6(12), e821–e830. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2352-3018(19)30338-8