Gastric Bypass Surgery Help Treat Type 2 Diabetes

Nov, 2020 - By SMI

Every year more than 250,000 individuals in the United States experience gastric bypass surgery, which helps them lose weight.

Gastric bypass surgery is the most effective treatment for reversing or treating type 2 diabetes in severely obese individuals. Many individuals achieve diabetes remission after surgery and no longer need diabetes medications. The surgery helps lose weight by changing how the small intestine and stomach handle the food a person eats. The food will no longer go into some parts of the small intestine and stomach that absorb food. Gastric bypass surgery has unique, weight-loss-independent effects in the treatment of diabetes, however, this remained a long-standing question in the field.

Now, the research team at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis suggests that weight loss after gastric bypass surgery drives metabolic improvements such as diabetes remission. The research was published in August 2020 in The New England Journal of Medicine. During this research, the researchers examined severely obese individuals with diabetes who had experienced bariatric surgery and found that they lost around 18% of their body weight after surgery. The team then compared those severely obese individuals with those who lost the same weight through diet. More than 40% of adult Americans are obese, and close to one in ten are severely obese.

Every year more than 250,000 individuals in the United States experience gastric bypass surgery, which helps them lose weight. Moreover, the team found that both group members experienced similar metabolic improvements such as reductions in the need for insulin, reductions in the need for other diabetes drugs, better insulin action in muscle, liver, and fat tissue, and reductions in blood sugar levels throughout the day. According the team, it has been recognized that bariatric surgery has metabolic, therapeutic effects that result in better glucose control and achieve diabetes remission beyond the effects of weight loss.