After a month of major Fatty Liver medical meetings, Jörn Schattenberg, Louise Campbell and Roger Green explore emerging stories that will shape the next 6-12 months in Fatty Liver disease. This conversation focuses on the need for different specialties to align in treating the complete range of non-communicable metabolic diseases.

Collaborative energies shifting the force around Fatty Liver

Jörn starts the conversation with a personal highlight: he attended last month’s EASD meeting for the first time. Historically, few hepatologists attend this meeting. He views his attendance as indicative of a trend: hepatologists and endocrinologists working together on diabetes and NAFLD. Louise echoes the sentiment that liver health is gaining traction as a critical function of holistic patient management. However, she notes cardiology appears to be slow on the uptake. She also asserts that nurses should have a clear role in this discussion around holistic patient management.
Roger links collaborative energy to a completely different kind of energy formation: capital investment. He notes Akero’s recent filing for $230 million in equity to help bring efruifermin to market based on Phase 2b results. If this effort succeeds, it may signify that the financial markets are becoming more optimistic about NASH drugs after several years of extreme skepticism.
As the conversation winds down, Jörn returns to his original theme to discuss how endocrinologists have received the concept of liver disease as part of multimorbidity management in patients living with T2DM. He reports that the endocrinologists have been eager to learn the liver testing tools and metrics they should use. They require simple tests with high negative predictive values. That way, they know when it is time to send a patient to the hepatologist. This reminds Roger of Quentin Anstee’s talk in Dublin about the different roles that first and second biomarker tests play in the diagnostic process. The conversation finishes with Roger making a correlation between Quentin’s talk and Jörn’s recent experiences engaging with the endocrinology community.