In a large study tracking obese patients, researchers found that gastric bypass surgery, and other weight-loss surgeries, leads to long-term weight loss and lowers risks forheart disease and diabetes. Swedish researchers tracked 4000 severely obese patients, including 1845 who underwent weight-loss surgery: 641 patients in the surgery group and 627 patients in the nonsurgery "control" group completed the 10-year examination. At one interval in the study, the control group had a weight increase of 1.6%; however, in the surgery group, weight had decreased by 16.1%. The surgery group also had a lower calorie intake and higher level of physical activity throughout the duration of the study. High blood pressure, diabetes, high triglyceride levels, and low high-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels were all improved in the surgery group at both 2 and 10 years. In the nonsurgery group, 24% of patients had developed diabetes after 10 years, compared with 7% in the surgery group. In a New England Journal of Medicineeditorial on the subject, Caren Solomon, MD, MPH, and Robert Dluhy, MD, agree that weight-loss surgery "is currently the most successful approach to rescuing patients with severe obesity and reversing or preventing the development of several diseases associated with obesity."
Ms. Farley is a freelance medical writer based in Wakefield, RI.
In Seniors: Consider CMV Serostatus
When Recommending Flu Vaccine
Older people who have cytomegalovirus seem to have less robust responses to the trivalent influenza vaccine than those who do not have CMV.
News from the year's biggest meetings
Clinical features with downloadable PDFs