Liver fibrosis is a serious but often overlooked condition that affects millions of people around the world. It happens when the liver gets hurt repeatedly over time, leading to scar tissue forming inside the organ.
This scarring can get worse and turn into cirrhosis or even liver cancer. Right now, there are still no approved medicines that directly treat or reverse liver fibrosis.
The condition can be caused by things like hepatitis infections, drinking too much alcohol, certain metabolic problems, exposure to toxins, or autoimmune diseases. When the liver is damaged again and again, it tries to repair itself.
A certain type of liver cell, called a hepatic stellate cell, becomes active. In a healthy liver, these cells are quiet. But when the liver is injured, they start making collagen, which creates scar tissue. This scarring makes it harder for the liver to work properly.
Because fibrosis is so complex, with many overlapping biological processes involved, medicines that block only one pathway usually don’t work very well. That’s why scientists have become more interested in drug combinations that can block several of these harmful pathways at once.
A recent study by researchers from China Pharmaceutical University offers a new and hopeful approach. The team, led by Hong Wang and Haiping Hao, discovered that two existing drugs—silybin and carvedilol—work much better together than alone when it comes to fighting liver fibrosis. Their results were published on December 15, 2025, in the journal Targetome.
Silybin is a natural compound found in milk thistle and is often used as a liver supplement. Carvedilol is a drug already used to treat high blood pressure and heart failure. Both have long records of safe use in humans. The researchers tested these two drugs using lab experiments, liver cell cultures, and mouse models of liver injury.
Silybin alone was able to protect liver cells from damage caused by toxins and inflammation. It helped reduce oxidative stress, cell death, and inflammation in liver cells. However, it was not very good at stopping the scarring process once stellate cells were activated. So the researchers searched for another drug to pair with it.
They tested almost 400 approved medicines to find the best partner. Carvedilol stood out. When used with silybin, it dramatically reduced collagen buildup and stopped stellate cells from becoming active. This effect was seen in both human and rat cells, as well as in primary stellate cells.
In mice with chemically-induced liver fibrosis, the combination worked even better. The researchers found that using a fixed-dose ratio of 50:1 (silybin to carvedilol) gave the strongest results.
This combo reduced liver injury, inflammation, and scarring more than either drug on its own. In fact, it performed better than obeticholic acid, another drug being tested for liver disease.
The team also figured out how the drug pair works. They found that the combination blocks the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway, which plays a key role in the activation of stellate cells and the growth of scar tissue. Together, silybin and carvedilol shut down this pathway more effectively than either drug alone.
This study is exciting because it shows that two low-cost, widely used drugs could be repurposed as a powerful treatment for liver fibrosis. Since these drugs are already approved and considered safe, the path to clinical trials and real-world use could be much faster.
The study also shows how testing drug combinations in a smart, targeted way can uncover new treatments for complex diseases like fibrosis. While more studies are needed in humans, this research gives hope that a long-awaited therapy for liver fibrosis may finally be within reach.
If you care about liver health, please read studies about simple habit that could give you a healthy liver, and common diabetes drug that may reverse liver inflammation.
For more information about health, please see recent studies about simple blood test that could detect your risk of fatty liver disease, and results showing this green diet may strongly lower non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.
The study is published in Targetome.
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