LILLE, France & CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The NASH Education ProgramTM is an endowment fund created at the end of 2016 by the biopharmaceutical company GENFIT with the objective to conduct – together with other key stakeholders committed to the fight against nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) – a series of disease awareness initiatives around NASH. Today, it publishes new results from the first survey conducted in the US for the NASH Global Health ObservatoryTM.
Some highlights:
- 89% of diabetologists/endocrinologists surveyed consider that patients they see in daily practice are at high risk of developing NAFLD or more severely, NASH.
- Around 65% of hepatologists, gastroenterologists, diabetologists and endocrinologists surveyed indicated a need for educational material on emerging therapies and management strategies for the treatment of NASH.
- A majority of hepatologists/gastroenterologists (60%) understand that “Resolution of NASH” (ballooning/inflammation) should be a major objective for a therapeutic treatment aimed at preventing disease progression.
- Only 49% of hepatologists/gastroenterologists realize that cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death in NAFLD patients.
Dr. Stephen Harrison, Medical Director of Pinnacle Clinical Research, Visiting Professor of Hepatology at the Radcliffe College of Medicine, University of Oxford, San Antonio, Texas, USA, commented:
“Results from this first pilot survey conducted in the US are extremely insightful in that they confirm – with numbers, facts and stats – what we already sense and experience in our daily practice. These results also shed an interesting light on some of the key issues related to NASH awareness. For instance, it’s quite striking to see how high the demand is from a vast majority of physicians for education on emerging therapies and management strategies to address NASH. This survey also delivers new insights about physicians’ expectations in relation to future treatments, with a majority of them now waiting for a drug that will be able to “resolve NASH”. For these reasons, I think the work performed by the NASH Global Health Observatory is extremely useful, and I’m now looking forward to their next wave of activity. Indeed, disease state awareness for both patients and clinicians is sorely needed. Ultimately, all of this knowledge should help us to take relevant actions for the benefit of patients and individuals at risk.”
Dr Kenneth Cusi, Professor of Medicine, Chief, Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA, added:
“As an expert specialized in endocrinology, diabetes and metabolism, I am particularly excited to be part of the work carried out by The NASH Education Program, especially because this pilot survey goes far beyond hepatology, to include endocrinologists and diabetologists. As such, it’s indeed well aligned with real life practice, because NASH is more than just a liver disease. The valuable insights gained through the pilot survey and the data collected are essential for all of the stakeholders in NASH to understand unmet needs related to medical education, in order to provide the right answers and design disease awareness initiatives to meet those needs. The survey reveals that there is an overwhelming agreement that NASH is a public health problem among clinicians and clear evidence of significant educational gaps. Two out of 3 physicians agreed on the need for more education on the management of such patients as well as on emerging therapies. Just 60% were aware of the AASLD recommendations. Just one out of six patients seeing a hepatologist came from my peer endocrinologists, although they see a population at high-risk for NASH. In terms of treatment, most relied on weight loss but admitted that only a very small number succeeded. Taken together, this gives an indication about all the work that still has to be done to increase awareness!”
The NASH Education ProgramTM’s ambition is to contribute to the global effort to spread awareness around Non-alcoholic Steatohepatitis (NASH). With the growing prevalence of NASH across the globe, there is indeed an increased need to improve both patients’ and physicians’ knowledge on the causes and consequences of this pathology which, as of today, remains without treatment options, but with several promising candidates in clinical development. The ultimate goal of The NASH Education ProgramTM is to improve general awareness within patient and medical communities, to ultimately optimize the identification and clinical management of NASH patients.
With The NASH Global Health ObservatoryTM, The NASH Education ProgramTM hopes to gain valuable insights into existing gaps in knowledge around NASH that it can then use to design future disease awareness initiatives, in collaboration with the scientific committee of The NASH Education ProgramTM. This committee is an invaluable resource thanks to the strong and highly relevant footprint in both hepatic and metabolic diseases contributed by members Dr Stephen Harrison (USA), Dr. Kenneth Cusi (USA), Dr. Sven Francque (Belgium), and Dr. Bertrand Cariou (France).
Results presented today come from a survey representing input from 392 American hepatologists, gastroenterologists, endocrinologists and diabetologists surveyed from October 5, to October 16, 2017. This study is the corollary of a survey conducted in France on 161 hepatologists and endocrinologists in February 2017.
Detailed results will be published during the AASLD Liver Meeting® via the Twitter account of The NASH Education ProgramTM (@NASH_education), using #NASHedu.
The AASLD Meeting will also be an opportunity for The NASH Education Program™ to release the full length version of an educational video involving Drs. Stephen Harrison, Mary Rinella, Arun Sanyal, Kenneth Cusi and Vlad Ratziu, that was shot during NASHTAG 2017.
Don't forget to save the date - June 12, 2018:
1st International
NASH Information Day!
ABOUT NASH
“NASH”, or nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, is a liver disease characterized by an accumulation of fat (lipid droplets), along with inflammation and degeneration of hepatocytes. The disease is associated with long term risk of progression to cirrhosis, a state where liver function is diminished, leading to liver insufficiency, and also progression to liver cancer.
ABOUT THE NASH EDUCATION PROGRAMTM
The Nash Education ProgramTM is an endowment fund created end of 2016 by GENFIT, with the objective to develop disease awareness initiatives around NASH, and as such address unmet information needs across a large set of stakeholders in the disease. Its investments should allow the fund to play an active educational role in the acquisition, production and dissemination of medical and scientific knowledge, towards the medical community, patients, and general public, under the supervision of a scientific committee.
