UAE studies weight-loss surgery as diabetes cure

Dubai: Weight-loss surgeries, such as gastric-bypass surgery, may become part of diabetes treatment in the UAE, a potential headway in the country's battle against the metabolic disease.

The UAE has the world's second highest number of diabetes cases, according to the International Diabetes Federation. About 20 per cent of the UAE population has diabetes, mostly Type II diabetes, which is also known as adult-onset diabetes.

Dr Fawaz Chikh Torab, senior consultant and assistant professor of anti-obesity surgery at UAE University, told Gulf News the university was preparing to study the effects of weight-loss surgeries on diabetes patients.

"We are going to start studying people with a body-mass-index (BMI) between 30 and 35 who also have diabetes. We will do gastric bypass on them and see how it affects their diabetes," he said.

"More than 100 patients will be part of the study. We hope to start in July," he said. The international guideline for performing gastric bypass is for people, whose BMI is above 40, which means they are morbidly obese. Studying the effects of gastric bypass surgery on diabetic patients with a lower BMI would be better in determining its positive effects and provide hope to diabetic patients who do not satisfy international standards for bariatric surgery.

The study is following up previous research conducted on the positive effects of weight-loss surgery, also called bariatric surgery, have on diabetes. Last week, Australian researchers found patients with Type II who underwent bariatric surgery were five times more likely to recover from diabetes.

The study also found that gastric bypass surgery or stomach stapling, in particular, caused diabetic patients to recover within days or months of the procedure. Most no longer need to take diabetes treatment.

Dr Torab said the research team hoped the findings of their study would pave the way for making bariatric surgery as a cure for diabetes in the country.

"(If the study confirms previous findings), it will help to solve the big problem of diabetes in the area," he said. "I think in the future, bariatric surgery will be part of standard treatment for Type II diabetes, especially for those cases that are resistant," he said.

He also said the guideline should require bariatric surgery to be done only after consulting a multi-disciplinary team, including a diabetologist, cardiologist, anesthesiologist and psychologist.

Dr Torab spoke to Gulf News after presenting his lecture on whether diabetes should be considered a disease that required surgical intervention at the Surgery Conference at Arab Health.