ESSENCE — design and population
Design, allocation, arms and the population enrolled.
§2Design and population
§2.1Design and allocation
- Design class
- Randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group
- Masking
- Double-blind (participant, investigator and sponsor)
- Arms
- 2
- Allocation
- Randomised between the intervention and its comparator
- Endpoint adjudication
- Not applicable to the primary endpoint of this design
- Data monitoring
- As specified in the protocol
§2.2Arms
Table 2. Randomised arms. Illustrative: arm-level allocations are reconstructed by the Institute from the design class and the randomised total where the published report does not state them.
| Arm | Allocated | Share | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Semaglutide | 636 | 53.1 % | Intervention at the dose reached after titration |
| Placebo | 561 | 46.9 % | Matched placebo, administered on the same schedule |
| Randomised total 1,197 as published. Arm-level splits are reconstructed and are not published figures. | |||
§2.3Population
Indication. Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis
Steatotic liver disease with histological evidence of hepatocyte ballooning and lobular inflammation occurring in the context of at least one cardiometabolic risk factor. Formerly termed non-alcoholic steatohepatitis.
Geographic footprint. United Kingdom · Norway · Finland · Netherlands · Poland · Czechia · Republic of Korea · Taiwan · Australia.
§2.4Eligibility as the Institute reads it
- Included. Steatotic liver disease with histological evidence of hepatocyte ballooning and lobular inflammation occurring in the context of at least one cardiometabolic risk factor. Formerly termed non-alcoholic steatohepatitis.
- Excluded. Participants for whom the intervention is contraindicated, including personal or family history of medullary thyroid carcinoma. Exclusion criteria narrow the population to which the estimate applies and are the principal source of indirectness where a trial estimate is applied to ordinary practice.
References cited on this page
References are numbered in order of first citation in this document. Each superscript in the text links to its entry below.
- Sanyal AJ, Newsome PN, Kliers I, Østergaard LH, Long MT, Kjær MS, Cali AMG, Bugianesi E, Rinella ME, Roden M, Ratziu V. Phase 3 trial of semaglutide in metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis. New England Journal of Medicine 2025;392(21):2089–2099. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa2413258
Identifiers are reproduced only where the Institute holds them. Where a digital object identifier or PubMed identifier is not shown, the Institute has recorded the journal and year and has not constructed an identifier.