Obese people who undergo weight-loss surgery can dramatically delay, and perhaps evenprevent, the onset of type 2 diabetes, Swedish researchers said last Wednesday.
Prior studies have shown that weight-loss surgery can reverse type 2 diabetes in patients who already have the condition.
The latest findings offer evidence that the procedures can prevent the condition.
“We saw a marked delay (in the development of diabetes) over 15 years,” said Lars Sjostrom of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, whose study appears in the New England Journal of Medicine.
“Some of those surgical patients will probably develop diabetes later. But over a lifetime, there will be a large difference.” According to the World Health Organisation, 346 million people worldwide have diabetes.
Most of them, about 90 per cent, have type 2 diabetes, the form of the disease linked with obesity and lack of exercise.
The link between obesity and diabetes is well-documented, and making lifestyle changes or taking weight-reducing drugs can cut the risk of diabetes by 40 to 45per cent.
The study, part of the larger Swedish Obese Subject study,was designed to see if the surgical weight loss would have thesame effect. None of the patients included in the test haddiabetes when the project began in 1987.