Three-quarters of patients who are diabetic and undergo Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery experience remission of the disease within a year of their procedure, Reuters reported of a Danish study March 1.
The study tracked outcomes of Roux-en-Y—a surgery that reduces the size of the stomach from around three pints to the size of a shot glass—in 1,111 people with type 2 diabetes who underwent the operation between 2006 and 2015.
Within six months of surgery, 65 percent of patients were in remission from their diabetes, and by a year that proportion was 74 percent. Five years later, though, 27 percent of patients who achieved remission had relapsed.
“We have known for some years from smaller studies ... that Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery has the ability to make type 2 diabetes go into remission, meaning freeing patients from the use of glucose-lowering drugs,” lead author Lene Ring Madsen told Reuters. “The novelty of our study is that we can confirm these results in large real-world cohorts of unselected patients with severe obesity and type 2 diabetes.”
Patients were more likely to achieve remission if they were younger, had been diabetic for a shorter period of time and had less severe diabetes. Women were less likely than men to see success.
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After graduating from Indiana University-Bloomington with a bachelor’s in journalism, Anicka joined TriMed’s Chicago team in 2017 covering cardiology. Close to her heart is long-form journalism, Pilot G-2 pens, dark chocolate and her dog Harper Lee.