A Wellington surgeon who has gained ethical approval to operate on diabetics who aren’t obese hopes to “switch off” the disease and cure other life-threatening illnesses.
Wakefield Obesity Clinic director Professor Richard Stubbs believes he can alleviate type 2 diabetes in people who have high insulin resistance by bypassing a part of the gut triggering the disease.
The Central Regional Ethics Committee approved a pilot study last April and up to 12 participants are being sought with a Body Mass Index of between 25 and 30.
Prof Stubbs said he was confident that most, if not all, participants would be diabetes-free after going under the knife.
Similar studies have been done in South and Central America, but never in a first world country where it is harder to get ethical approval, Prof Stubbs said.
Diabetes is diagnosed when the pancreas is not making enough insulin.
People who can’t make insulin are classed as Type 1 diabetics. Those that make insulin but the production is sluggish or their body is resistant to it have Type 2.
Current treatments can control diabetes to a certain extent, but there is no cure for the epidemic which affects more than 200,000 Kiwis, Prof Stubbs said.
“What we’re looking for is the thing that will switch it off.”
If the study succeeds, the next step will be creating a new drug that combats insulin resistance, the basic cause of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart attacks and strokes at a young age, polycystic ovary disease and possibly obesity itself, Prof Stubbs said.
However, it would take at least 10 years for the drug to be made available.
A fellow medical professor is sceptical of Prof Stubbs’ study, which will cost participants $30,000.
University of Otago medicine and human nutrition professor Jim Mann said the same results could be achieved through dramatic lifestyle changes for people who were not grossly obese.
“My argument would be that quite a lot of these people who are overweight, rather than obese would do well with intensive lifestyle therapy.”
He said the idea of a “pill that will do the trick” was a “huge quantum leap” from gastric bypasses resolving diabetes in some obese people.
More obese New Zealanders are having publicly funded bariatric surgery since the Government announced an extra $8 million in 2009 to finance a further 300 operations over four years.
Last year 350 people had surgery and this year 414 are expected to have surgery.
– © Fairfax NZ News
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