Gastric bypass surgery can put diabetes into remission

A GASTRIC bypass surgery can halt symptoms of Type 2 diabetes for years, a study has found.

The study, published in medical journal Diabetologia, found that three quarters of obese diabetic patients who had gastric bypass surgery went into remission within one year.

About 73 per cent of them remained free of diabetes five years after undergoing a procedure called Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass (RYGB), which reduces the upper stomach to the size of an egg.

South Asians are more susceptible to diabetes than Caucasians.

For the study, a team at Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark compared 1,111 patients with type 2 diabetes given RYGB surgery between 2006 and 2015 with a group of more than 1000 patients who did not receive a gastric bypass surgery.

In the first six months after surgery, 65 per cent of the RYGB patients went into remission and the percentage rose to 74 between six and 12 months.

The findings add to the growing body of evidence on the benefits of gastric bypass surgery to halt symptoms of Type 2 diabetes, the team wrote in Diabetologia.

"The findings from this study add to the growing body of evidence on effects of bariatric surgery, specifying that RYGB does cause remission of type 2 diabetes and is associated with a reduced risk of microvascular, and possibly macrovascular complications... Predictors of remission success seem to be very consistent in randomised controlled trials, studies of selected cohorts and population-based studies."

They added: "On the other hand, there is a substantial risk of relapsing into type 2 diabetes, which should be accounted for when advising patients and planning post-surgery care."