Weight loss surgery ‘the most powerful treatment’ for diabetes

Scientists have claimed the biggest step forward in diabetes treatment in 100 years, after research found that weight loss surgery could ‘‘cure’’ the disease in around half of obese cases.

A coalition of 45 experts yesterday called for ‘‘radical measures’’ to address a growing diabetes pandemic. The researchers said one million patients in Britain were sufficiently overweight to benefit from surgery, with around 100,000 people a year likely to become suitable candidates for the procedure.

Britain’s NHS currently carries out about 6000 weight loss operations a year, with surgery such as gastric bypasses offered as a treatment for obesity.

New international guidelines say that patients with diabetes should be considered for such operations, in an attempt to reverse their condition.

Research shows that it achieves ‘‘long-term remission’’ in 30 to 63 per cent of cases.

Doctors said the NHS costs of such procedures would be dwarfed by the savings from the billions spent each year on managing diabetes and its complications.

Professor Francesco Rubino, professor of metabolic and bariatric surgery at King’s College London, and one of the team behind the guidelines, said: ‘‘This is the closest that we have ever been to a cure for diabetes. It is the most powerful treatment to date.’’

Doctors who drew up the guidelines said such changes could amount to the most significant breakthrough in diabetes care since the introduction of insulin in the 1920s.

The past decade has seen a 65 per cent rise in diagnoses of diabetes, of which nine in 10 are type 2, which is linked with sedentary lifestyles and poor diet.

Researchers said the most effective type of surgery was a gastric bypass, also known as stomach stapling, in which the digestive system is re-routed past most of the stomach. They said changing the anatomy altered the body’s macrobiotic environment, which had a dramatic and almost immediate impact on blood sugar.

Professor Sir George Alberti, co-author of the guidelines, said that although lifestyle changes – such as a very low-calorie diet – could reverse diabetes, it was not realistic to expect most people to be able to do this.