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Weight-Loss Surgery Often Cures Diabetes, Study Shows

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By CARLA K. JOHNSON, The Associated Press

Published: January 23, 2008

CHICAGO - A new study gives the strongest evidence yet that obesity surgery can cure diabetes.

Patients who had surgery to reduce the size of their stomachs were five times more likely to see their diabetes disappear over the next two years than were patients who had standard diabetes care, according to Australian researchers.

Most of the surgery patients were able to stop taking diabetes drugs and achieve normal blood tests.

"It's the best therapy for diabetes that we have today, and it's very low risk," said the study's lead author, John Dixon of Monash University Medical School in Melbourne, Australia.

The patients had stomach band surgery, a procedure more common in Australia than in the United States, where gastric bypass surgery, or stomach stapling, predominates.

Gastric bypass is even more effective against diabetes, achieving remission in a matter of days or a month, said David Cummings, who wrote an accompanying editorial in the journal but was not involved in the study.

"We have traditionally considered diabetes to be a chronic, progressive disease," said Cummings of the University of Washington in Seattle, "but these operations really do represent a realistic hope for curing most patients."
Diabetes experts who read the study said surgery should be considered for some obese patients, but more research is needed to see how long results last and which patients benefit most. Surgery risks should be weighed against diabetes drug side effects and the long-term risks of diabetes, they said.

Experts generally agree that weight-loss surgery would never be appropriate for diabetics who are not obese, and federal guidelines restrict the surgery to obese people.

The diabetes benefits of weight-loss surgery were known, but the Australian study in the Journal of the American Medical Association is the first of its kind to compare diabetes in patients randomly assigned to surgery or standard care. Scientists consider randomized studies to yield the best evidence.

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