Effect of once-weekly subcutaneous semaglutide on abdominal visceral fat area in Japanese adults with overweight and obesity: A post hoc analysis of the STEP 6 trial

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial paper looks at Semaglutide.

A post hoc analysis of a subset of participants with visceral fat area (VFA) measurements in the STEP 6 trial was conducted to examine both the correlation between VFA and clinical parameters and the effect of semaglutide on VFA in key subgroups.

Why It Was Studied

CT.gov TRIAL REGISTRATION IDENTIFICATION NUMBER: NCT03811574.

Who Took Part

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

How the Study Was Run

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

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Semaglutide and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

Blinding on both sides kept the participants and researchers unaware of who received Semaglutide.

Some participants received a placebo instead of Semaglutide, giving a reference point.

Correlation between baseline VFA (and change in VFA from baseline to week 68) and clinical parameters (body weight, body mass index [BMI], waist circumference, hepatic parameters, glycated hemoglobin, blood pressure, lipids, high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, and plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 [PAI-1]) was evaluated.

Percentage change in VFA between semaglutide and placebo was compared across subgroups.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Glucagon-Like Peptides, Intra-Abdominal Fat, Obesity, Overweight, Body Mass Index, Waist Circumference and Japan.

Author keywords: Diabetes mellitus, East Asian people and Visceral fat area.

What This Means in Plain Language

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

Results are reported in around 6 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2025 (Obesity research & clinical practice), a journal based in Netherlands.

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