New Delhi: A clinical study in India has shown that an anti-diabetes medicine called empagliflozin can help reduce liver fat in diabetes patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, a disorder that raises the risk of cirrhosis and liver cancer.

The trial has found that empagliflozin lowers liver fat levels among diabetes patients with NAFLD from an average 16 per cent to 11 per cent after 20 weeks of taking the drug as a single daily 10mg tablet.

Fifty diabetes patients who had volunteered for the trial were randomly classified into two groups. Those who received empagliflozin as an add-on to standard diabetes treatment had on an average about four per cent lower liver fat than those who received only the standard diabetes treatment.

Doctors estimate that nearly half of diabetes patients also have NAFLD, which can progress to a severe form of the disorder and then to fibrosis or cirrhosis of the liver or to liver cancer.

Besides, NAFLD is by itself an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease or chronic kidney disease.

"People have tried various medications to treat non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, but drug regulators have not approved any specific medicine to treat this condition so far," said Ambrish Mithal, a senior consultant and chair of endocrinology at Medanta Hospital in Gurgaon, who led the study.

Empagliflozin, while helping regulate blood sugar, has also been found to promote weight loss in high-risk diabetes patients by burning away fat and to reduce the rates of cardiovascular events.

"It was melting fat away from other parts of the body. We decided to test its effect on the liver," Mithal told The Telegraph. The findings were published in the research journal Diabetes Care this week.

The doctors say the 10mg daily dose of empagliflozin, if adopted into clinical practice, is likely to cost patients about Rs 50 extra per day.

They say they did not find any correlation between sugar control and liver fat reduction, nor between body weight loss and liver fat reduction, suggesting the effect on liver fat was independent of the drug's other effects.

According to the doctors, their findings need to be validated through larger trials that should also examine the long-term clinical relevance of the lowered fat levels.

Other clinicians view the findings as significant but caution that the drug should be used only in diabetes patients.

"Diet, exercise and weight loss help reduce fat levels to some extent, but there's no medication yet," said Naval Vikram, professor of medicine at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, who was not associated with the study.

"So this could be a significant advance. But empagliflozin is approved only for use in diabetes; people should not begin to think it could be used to treat non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in patients without diabetes."

The other doctors who helped conduct the trial were Mohammad Shafi Kuchay, Sonal Krishnan, Sunil Mishra, Khalid Jamal Farooqui, Manish Kumar Singh, Jasjeet Singh Wasir, Beena Bansal, Parjeet Kaur, Ganesh Jevalikar, Harmendeep Kaur Gill and Narendra Singh Chaudhary.