In the News – Treating Diabetes With Surgery?

Snippet from the non-hair-loss article:

For some people with diabetes, surgery may be the best medicine.

Two studies have found that weight-loss operations worked much better than the standard therapies for Type 2 diabetes in obese and overweight people whose blood sugar was out of control. Those who had surgery, which stapled the stomach and rerouted the small intestine, were much more likely to have a complete remission of diabetes, or to need less medicine, than people who were given the typical regimen of drugs, diet and exercise.

The surgery also helped many to lower their blood pressure and cholesterol.

Read the rest — Surgery for Diabetes May Be Better Than Standard Treatment

(The story snippet above is from a few months ago, but I just read an opinion piece on Medscape.com that brought it to my attention. Since the Medscape article requires a login to read, I found the above NY Times link.)

In a recent article published in the New England Journal of Medicine, authors from two medical centers presented the results of obesity surgery in patients with type 2 diabetes. There was little doubt (from two small studies) that for reasons yet unclear, the diabetes was successfully reduced within 3 months even prior to reaching the goals for weight loss.

The patients in both studies were morbidly obese. The implications for surgical treatment of diabetes in patients who may not be morbidly obese is clearly there, but a greater understanding of the process needs to be in hand before this type of treatment can be offered.