Research

Hormonal

In patients with Type 2 Diabetes and NAFLD, adding liraglutide or sitagliptin to metformin significantly reduces intrahepatic lipid, visceral adipose tissue, and body weight, whereas adding insulin glargine does not.

If you have Type 2 Diabetes and fatty liver, adding a GLP-1 agonist (like liraglutide) or a DPP-4 inhibitor (like sitagliptin) to your metformin can significantly reduce liver fat and belly fat. Adding insulin, however, does not appear to reduce liver or belly fat, even though it controls blood sugar.

GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
Combined with metformin, both liraglutide and sitagliptin, but not insulin glargine, reduced body weight, IHL, and VAT in addition to improving glycemic control in patients with T2DM and NAFLD.
Jinhua Yan et al. · Hepatology · 2018

Why this rating

Randomized, active-controlled, multicenter trial with objective MRI-PDFF measurements, though limited by a relatively small sample size (n=75) and open-label design.

Source

Liraglutide, Sitagliptin, and Insulin Glargine Added to Metformin: The Effect on Body Weight and Intrahepatic Lipid in Patients With Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus and Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease

Jinhua Yan et al. · Hepatology · 2018

DOI 10.1002/hep.30320

rct · n=75Cited 250×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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