Similar weight loss with semaglutide regardless of diabetes and cardiometabolic risk parameters in individuals with metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease: Post hoc analysis of three randomised controlled trials

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial paper looks at Semaglutide.

Weight loss mediated by glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) analogues is lower in patients with type 2 diabetes versus those without.

Type 2 diabetes and obesity are risk factors for metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) and associated steatohepatitis (MASH).

The researchers evaluated weight changes in adults with MASLD/MASH with or without type 2 diabetes receiving the GLP-1 analogue semaglutide.

Who Took Part

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were adults, middle-aged adults and older adults, both men and women.

This was a post hoc analysis of data from three 48-72-week randomised trials investigating the effect of semaglutide versus placebo in adults with MASLD (NCT03357380) or biopsy-confirmed MASH (NCT02970942 and NCT03987451).

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized and placebo-controlled study.

The participants were allocated by chance, so the Semaglutide group and the comparison group should start out alike.

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the Semaglutide group a baseline to be compared against.

Weight changes were analysed by type 2 diabetes status (type 2 diabetes [n = 209], pre-type 2 diabetes [n = 51] and no diabetes [n = 40]) and by other cardiometabolic risk parameters using analysis of covariance and Spearman's rank correlations.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Glucagon-Like Peptides, Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2, Weight Loss, Hypoglycemic Agents, Cardiometabolic Risk Factors, Fatty Liver and Non-alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease.

The authors tagged it with the keywords GLP‐1 analogue, semaglutide, type 2 diabetes and weight control.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and placebo-controlled study of Semaglutide.

Results are reported in around 5 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2025 (Diabetes, obesity & metabolism), a journal based in England.

More context: the Semaglutide compound page, all human trials.