Weight-loss surgery did a better job of controlling type 2 diabetes in overweight and moderately obese patients than the most advanced medical treatment for the disease, researchers said on Monday.
The study, conducted at the Cleveland Clinic and presented at the annual scientific sessions of the American College of Cardiology in Chicago, showed that patients who underwent surgery were more than three times more likely to gain control over their diabetes after one year than the group that was treated with drugs.
Uncontrolled diabetes is a major risk factor for heart problems, including heart attack.
"Within days and hours of surgery -- before there's any measurable weight loss -- we saw dramatic changes. A majority of(surgery) patients left the hospital with normal blood sugars. However, this was not as effective for people who had diabetes for many years," said Dr. Philip Schauer, director of Bariatric and Metabolic Institute at the Cleveland Clinic, who led the clinical trial.
Shauer called the findings, which were published in the New England Journal of Medicine, "a potential paradigm change" for how some patients should be treated for diabetes.
In the study, dubbed STAMPEDE, researchers randomly assigned 150 patients -- three-quarters of them female -- with a body mass index between 27 and 43 into one of three groups.
There were two surgery groups -- laparoscopic gastric bypass, a surgery that reroutes the digestive system and allows food to bypass part of the small intestine, and sleeve gastrectomy, a procedure that reduces the stomach to about one- quarter of its original size.
The two surgery groups were compared with a third group that got the most advanced non-insulin treatment for diabetes, such as liraglutide, marketed by Novo Nordisk under the brand name Victoza.
The research was primarily funded by Johnson & Johnson's Ethicon Endo-Surgery Inc, a maker of surgical instruments used for bariatric surgery.
Reaching the goal
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Weight-loss surgery better for controlling diabetes than drugs
