Three times, she was told a liver might be available, only for each opportunity to fall through.
“Every day, you think about when you can have the operation, and, if you have the operation, will you die from it too? I was very down,” Quek said. “Sometimes, I felt like giving up but luckily, I met a doctor who never gives up on his patients.”
Her children, now aged 18 and 19, were her strength and the reason why she held on during the lowest moments of her health ordeal.
TREATMENT OPTIONS FOR PRIMARY BILIARY CHOLANGITIS
The first line of treatment is a medication called ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA), a bile acid. Dr Thinesh explained that UDCA does not cure the disease but can be effective in 60 to 80 per cent of patients, slowing the disease down to the point of minimal progression.
For those who do not respond to UDCA, other options can be used. Newer treatments such as seladelpar and elafibranor have shown response rates of about 50 to 60 per cent in patients who did not adequately respond to UDCA or failed the treatment, Dr Thinesh said.
“Both drugs have also demonstrated improvements in itch symptom scores, which is a major step forward in treating the disease,” he said.
Elafibranor was registered in Singapore in September 2025 while seladelpar is not yet available in Singapore.
A liver transplantation is usually recommended for patients where the disease has advanced despite treatment.
