Losing weight helps get rid of type 2 diabetes in only 6% of patients

Chinese doctors have found out that getting rid of excess weight enables the treatment of type 2 diabetes in a minimum of patients, about 6 percent of the total number, which does not correspond to the results of recent clinical trials. The researchers' respective conclusions were published in an article in the scientific journal PLoS Medicine.

Weight loss helped only 6 percent of patients get rid of diabetes in the first eight years after diagnosis, and half of them developed hyperglycemia again three years after remission. All this indicates that getting rid of excess weight very rarely helps to get rid of diabetes outside the walls of laboratories, said Professor Andrea Luk of the University of Hong Kong in China.

Professor Luk and several other doctors came to this conclusion after examining data collected as part of the RAMP-DM project, which aimed to study the risk factors and complications associated with type 2 diabetes. More than 37 thousand residents of Hong Kong participated in his work.

The researchers used their health data collected by Hong Kong's health services from 2000 to 2017 to assess how various dietary and lifestyle interventions aimed at losing excess weight affected the subsequent development of the disease. Such measures are most often the first and second advice of doctors to patients who have type 1 diabetes for the first time.

The study of doctors in the RAMP-DM project showed that such therapy helps about 6 percent of patients. In addition, after three years, the effect of losing weight disappeared in 66 percent of patients, as a result of which they developed diabetes again. Chinese doctors noted that the success of the therapy in field conditions was much lower than what other doctors have achieved in laboratories, during clinical trials.

According to researchers, such large differences in the success of therapy in laboratories and in field conditions are related to the fact that the experiments lasted not so long, and the participants always received advice from scientists who maintained an active reverse relationship with the patients. Further study of these differences will help develop new and more effective dietary approaches for the treatment of type 2 diabetes, the doctors said.

In recent decades, researchers have found a lot of evidence that excess weight is one of the main causes of type 2 diabetes. Recent experiments conducted by biologists on mice and some other animals show that going on a diet periodically considerably reduces the likelihood of diabetes and obesity, and also help to get rid of existing insulin resistance. These findings have sparked a great deal of interest in dietary treatments for diabetes.

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