New drug shows promise in lowering dangerous blood fats

It is already known that heart problems and diseases are caused by excess bad fat.

High levels of triglycerides, a type of fat found in the blood, can raise the risk of serious cardiac issues as well as strokes.

These fats often increase in people with diabetes or those who are overweight and while some treatments exist, they do not always work well. A new study has found that a drug called olezarsen may offer a much better solution.

The study was shared at the ESC Congress 2025 and also published in the American Heart Journal, led by Dr. Brian Bergmark from Brigham and Women’s Hospital at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

The drug was tested in a large, high-quality clinical trial called ESSENCE-TIMI 73b which included over 1,300 adults in North America and Europe who had moderate hypertriglyceridemia.

Hypertriglyceridemia is when the triglyceride levels are higher than normal but not extremely high.

Most of these people also had a high risk of heart disease, either because they already had it or because they had diabetes and were older than 55.

Participants in the study were already receiving standard treatments to control their cholesterol levels and were randomly placed into three groups: one group received 50 mg of olezarsen, another received 80 mg, and the third group got a placebo (a treatment with no active drug). Each person received an injection once every four weeks for a year.

After six months, the results were quite impressive as people who took olezarsen had big drops in their triglyceride levels.

The group that received 50 mg of the drug had a 58.4% bigger drop in triglyceride levels than the placebo group, and the 80 mg group had a 60.6% bigger drop. These changes were seen as very significant.

In fact, more than 85% of people taking olezarsen saw their triglyceride levels fall below 150 mg/dL, which is considered normal.

Olezarsen also helped reduce other harmful blood fats, including remnant cholesterol, non-HDL cholesterol, and apolipoprotein B. Interestingly, it did not affect LDL cholesterol, which is the main target of most cholesterol-lowering drugs.

Overall, this study shows that olezarsen may offer strong potential to lower triglyceride levels in people at risk of heart disease.

Most people in the study reached safe levels of triglycerides, something that is hard to achieve with current treatments.