Current and Future Implications of Weight Loss Drugs on Liver Disease.

🎖️ Top 10% JournalOct 18, 2025Clinics in liver disease

Weight Loss Drugs and Liver Disease: Current Insights and Future Directions

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Abstract

Metabolic liver diseases, like MASLD and MASH, are serious conditions that need new treatments to stop their progression or improve liver health. Recently, certain weight loss medications, known as GLP1-RAs, have been approved for managing obesity and diabetes, and they show promise in helping liver health in patients with these liver diseases. Successful clinical trials have indicated that these drugs can reduce liver fat and improve liver health. Newer medications are also being studied, which might further enhance liver health. This review looks at how weight loss drugs can help treat liver diseases in people who are obese and discusses their potential to change how these diseases are managed.

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The disease burden of metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) and its progressive form, metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH), represents an unmet need for pharmacotherapies to halt progression or reverse fibrosis. Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP1-RAs) are the first to be approved for chronic obesity management and diabetes to be examined in individuals with MASLD/MASH. Successful phase 2 and phase 3 randomized control trials have shown indirect improvements in liver fat, histology, and biomarkers. Over the last few years, newer agents with glucose-dependent insulinotropic peptide agonism and/or glucagon receptor agonism have shown considerable improvements in liver fat content and histology in phase 2 studies. Based on the mounting evidence, single, dual, and triple incretin receptor agonists are promising agents in the treatment of MASLD. In this narrative review, we evaluate weight loss pharmacotherapy for MASLD and then explore the potential for a "positive" disruption that these agents will bring to the existing management of MASLD in patients with obesity.