The majority of people with diabetes who had bariatric surgery to lose weight were able to stop taking their diabetes medications, which led to a significant decline in health-care costs, according to a study released Monday.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, looked at 2,235 adults who had the stomach-reducing surgery and who also had Type 2 diabetes, a common form of the disease often associated with weight gain. Six months after surgery, nearly 75% of patients had eliminated their diabetes medications and after two years 84.5% of patients were off medicine.
The study, published in this month’s Archives of Surgery, a Journal of the American Medical Association publication, was funded by the Department of Health and Human Services.
Many patients were able to stop taking their medications almost immediately after surgery and before they’d lost large amounts of weight, backing theories that stomach hormones altered by surgery are better able to control blood glucose levels than weight loss alone.
“Until a successful nonsurgical means for preventing and reversing obesity is developed, bariatric surgery appears to be the only intervention that can result in a sustained reversal of both obesity and Type 2 diabetes in most patients receiving it,” said, Martin Makary, the study’s lead researcher and an associate professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Dr. Makary said the majority of patients were able to stop taking other types of medications, such as high-blood pressure pills.
About 86% of the patients, who were covered by Blue Cross and Blue Shield insurance, were on at least one diabetes medication before surgery, with an average of 4.4 medications per patient. About 23% of patients were on insulin.
Jennifer Corbett Dooren