Most will within 24 hours of having the operation no longer need their medication.
And within a few months almost all will have lost 30 to 40% of their body weight.
Why then is gastric bypass not the standard recommendation treatment for
all overweight or obese people with diabetes?
>> So this is a complicated question because there's no doubt that
the number of people with morbid obesity around the world
greatly exceeds any capacity one can imagine for doing this surgery.
So, there's completely inequality here.
You can't solve the problem that way and that is obvious.
So it's reserved for societies that organize this.
I must say that in some countries they do it.
I mean, they really go for it in some South American countries,
for instance, and in China.
They do this because they realize that this is probably the simplest way of
solving the problem.
It's also been inferred that it's expensive.
But that is not quite true because given that it's successful and
helps the way it's ought to do, it is also cost-effective.
This has been looked at in several studies.
So, the economic argument doesn't really fit in here.
The problem is to organize it,
it's the infrastructure that is required to do this.
In addition, I must admit that I cannot image [LAUGH]
a large part of the population having surgery for
something which is really a more or less natural phenomenon.
So there are some problems here.
Now we should continue our work to
try to see if we can think of something else to do than doing surgery.
But in the mean time for those that really suffer,
that have an early diabetes and morbid obesity,
it is a good therapy, it's the best actually.
>> What new questions has your work on gastric bypass raised?
>> Yeah, so the first question was of course to try to find out what is going on
here because if you know the answer to this and
we think we have a fairly good idea about it, then you could probably also devise
other methods of treating type two diabetes and obesity.
And so we've been very interested in these hormones that are released from the gut
that regulate the appetite and also that regulate insulin secretion.
And we hope that we can understand that we can do one of two things.
Perhaps we can make a mixture of these hormones, the right mixture the one that
is actually that is elicited by the surgical procedure.
And then give it to people and get the same effect.
And that is something that many people are working on and I think it has a potential.
I think it has a good potential.
I think there will be medication one day where you get
most of the effects of what you have with surgery and
that you can then take. It will probably be expensive also.
>> So what you're saying is one day,
instead of having this surgery, we'll be able to have medication instead.
>> Yeah, I think so.
I think so.
I think it will be possible.
There's several groups working very very hard on this, including our own.
>> Other researchers share Jens Holst's optimism regarding new treatment for the future.
And a lot is being done to develop so-called
medical gastric bypass interventions.
A medical gastric bypass intervention does not imply surgery.
And the hope is, the more knowledge about the underlying mechanisms of gastric
bypass surgery will bring about new non-surgical treatments which
will circumvent the major side effects and risks connected to having surgery.