Systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials on the effects of obeticholic acid on the blood lipid profile: Insights into liver disorders and liver cancer.

AIM

Treatment with obeticholic acid (OCA) affects the blood lipid profile. Therefore, a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) was performed to investigate the effects of OCA on blood lipids and lipoproteins.

METHODS AND RESULTS

The electronic databases of PubMed, Web of Science, SCOPUS, and Google Scholar were searched. The mean differences were meta-analyzed to obtain a pooled weighted mean difference (WMD) and the 95% CI across the trials using the Der Simonian and Laird random-effects method. Six (6) articles with 10 trials for low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), and 8 trials for high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), total cholesterol (TC), and triglycerides (TG) levels were included in the meta-analysis. . Most studies were conducted in patients with liver dysregulation (fatty liver, liver cancer). The pooled results showed that the levels of TC (WMD: 6.357 mg/dl) and LDL-C (WMD: 6.067 mg/dl) increased while TG (WMD: -22.417 mg/dl) decreased after treatment with OCA. A slight but significant decrease was also observed for HDL-C levels (WMD: -1.492 mg/dl). A significant non-linear response was observed only between the TG levels and the length of intervention. Larger reductions in TG levels were observed over intervention durations of less than 3 weeks, but regarding interventions for more than 3 weeks, the impact on TG was modest.

CONCLUSION

OCA administration causes significant increases in blood levels of TC and LDL-C while decreasing HDL-C and TG in humans. More study needed on liver cancer.

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