NIH researchers studying how weight-loss surgery and diet affects type 2 diabetes
Episode # 98
Uploaded: May 16, 2012
Running Time: 3:30
CROWN: From the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, this is CLINICAL CENTER RADIO.
Why do so many people with type 2 diabetes who undergo weight-loss surgery see a rapid resolution of their disease, even before major weight loss occurs? NIH researchers are studying this question as they examine the effects of gastric-bypass surgery, an operation that makes the stomach smaller and causes food to bypass parts of the small intestine. Dr. Kristina Rother, with the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, explains:
ROTHER: Some people say it's easy to explain why this happens because when you undergo surgery, you hardly eat anything. We know this for 2,000 years that if you fast, if you don't eat, your diabetes gets better. But there are other people who say the type of surgery that is being done contributes to this resolution of diabetes.
CROWN: According to the American Diabetes Association, more than 25 million Americans have diabetes, which carries increased risk for heart attack, stroke, and other serious health complications.
ROTHER: Our statistics don't even reflect how bad diabetes is because if somebody dies of a heart attack, we have in our statistics that they died of a heart attack. But we don't clearly see in these statistics that it was diabetes [possibly] that led to that heart attack. I'm very much afraid for the future because with the rising epidemic of obesity, we will see more and more patients with type 2 diabetes, and younger and younger patients with type 2 diabetes.
CROWN: Rother explains that their study, which will be performed at the Clinical Center, will include two groups of diabetics. One group will include those who have had gastric bypass at an outside hospital, and the other will include those who have not had the surgery but will restrict their calorie intake, similar to a post-surgery patient. The Clinical Center will not provide the surgery to patients as part of the study. Rother adds that the goal is not to determine if surgery is a suitable cure for diabetes.
ROTHER: The dream outcome of our study is that we learn how bariatric surgery leads to this early resolution of type 2 diabetes and we can translate our knowledge into a treatment that does not require surgery. Now it probably isn't that simple but the principle is that we want to learn from bariatric surgery in order to develop therapies that would not require bariatric surgery.
CROWN: For more information about participation in this study, call toll free 1-866-999-5553. Reference the study number 10-DK-0064. From America's Clinical Research Hospital, this has been CLINICAL CENTER RADIO. In Bethesda, Maryland, I'm Ellen Crown, at the National Institutes of Health, an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services.
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