Common liver disease drug no better than placebo

Ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA) is a commonly used treatment for a liver disease called primary biliary cirrhosis, but a recent research report revealed that patients might as well take a placebo for all the good it does.

The report, published in The Lancet, a British medical journal, reviewed articles and abstracts concerning the drug which had appeared in scientific journals.

John Goulis and colleagues from the U.K.'s Royal Free Hospital investigated the efficacy of UDCA in primary biliary cirrhosis. They found that the published randomized controlled trials do not show evidence of therapeutic benefit of UDCA in primary biliary cirrhosis and suggested that its use as a standard therapy needs to be reexamined.