Weight loss surgery has reduced the risk of 10 years of obese patients to obtain type 2 diabetes by 80%, report from Swedish researchers.
The study, initiated in 1987, has already shown that weight loss surgery, also called bariatric surgery, can improve blood sugar levels in obese patients. The study also showed that surgery works much better than diet and exercise in reducing the risk of cardiac diseases and death of obese patients.But now Lars Sjostrom, MD, Doctorate, University of Gothenburg, Sweden and colleagues show even greater reductions in the risk of a diabetes of first time diabetes.
"Here the risk reduction is much stronger," says Sjetrom. "In the control group, which obtained usual care, 28% of patients developed diabetes over 10 years vs. 7% of patients in the surgery group. If you look at it 15 years later, it is 38% vs. 13 % in the surgery group. These numbers correspond to the risk reduction of about 80% with bariatric surgery. "
In people who had increased blood sugar levels, those who were submitted to weight loss surgery lowered the risk of diabetes by 87%. For every 13 such people who underwent surgery, 10 would be free from diabetes after 10 years.
Lunch Ideas Weight Loss - Weight Loss Surgery Prevents Diabetes
The discoveries are "provocative and exciting", writes the specialist in bariatric surgery at Duke University Danny O. Jacobs, MD, MPH, in an editorial that accompanies the report at the New England Journal of Medicine.
However, the Sjostrom notes that the study is not a clinical trial. For ethical reasons, patients were not randomly data standard treatment or bariatric surgery - which carried a risk of 5% death at the time. (Today's techniques are much safer, but far from free risk.) Instead, they compared 1,658 obese people without diabetes they chose to go through bariatric surgery to 1,771 matching obese people who did not want the surgery.
Sjetrom and Jacobs agree that other studies are needed before anyone can recommend weight loss surgery to avoid diabetes.
"There is a wealth of evidence that the operation can certainly decrease insulin requirement for patients with diabetes," says Jacobs. "But it would be a leap of faith to take you to the next level and say that a patient who is obese, but not morbid obese must undergo a surgical procedure to avoid diabetes."
In addition, Jacobs observes, there is no information on which the type of weight loss surgery would be best to avoid diabetes.
According to NIH accepted guidelines, weight loss surgery is only suitable for people whose body mass index (BMI) is 40 or higher, or 35 or higher for those with a serious condition related to obesity, such as diabetes or heart disease. / p>.
Sjetrom and colleagues found that weight loss surgery prevented diabetes, regardless of the IMC of the patient at the time of surgery.
For Jacobs, this suggests that the prevention effect of diabetes of bariatric surgery can be due to something beyond weight loss alone.
"It is possible that interventions that are even less invasive can make the very desirable goal of decreasing the incidence of type 2 diabetes and their attendant complications," he suggests.
