Original article published by Medical News Today on June 14, 2016. Click here to read the original article.
TUESDAY, June 14, 2016 (HealthDay News) — For patients with type 2 diabetes, remission after bariatric surgery is associated with a reduced risk of microvascular disease, even after subsequent relapse, according to a study published online June 6 in Diabetes Care.
Karen J. Coleman, Ph.D., from Kaiser Permanente Southern California in Pasadena, and colleagues conducted a retrospective observational cohort study involving 4,683 patients with type 2 diabetes who underwent bariatric surgery from 2001 through 2011. The correlation between type 2 diabetes remission/relapse status and the time to microvascular disease was assessed.
The researchers found that, compared with patients who never remitted, patients who experienced type 2 diabetes remission had a lower risk of incident microvascular disease (hazard ratio, 0.71). For patients who experienced a relapse after remission there was an inverse relationship between the length of time spent in remission and the risk of incident microvascular disease; the risk of microvascular disease was reduced for every additional year of time spent in remission prior to relapse (hazard ratio, 0.81), compared with patients who never remitted.
“Our results indicate that remission of type 2 diabetes after bariatric surgery confers benefits for risk of incident microvascular disease even if patients eventually experience a relapse of their type 2 diabetes,” the authors write.