Obesity surgery lowers heart risk, US study shows

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Gastric bypass surgery to treatobesity lowers the risk of heart disease even more thanpreviously believed, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.

Patients who got the surgery showed improved levels ofthree new measures of heart disease risk — C-reactive protein,lipoprotein A and homocysteine, the team at Stanford UniversitySchool of Medicine found.

They measured these proteins, as well as cholesterollevels, in 371 patients before surgery and again a year laterand found improvements to normal range in all of them.

“Medication with statins — the most effective non-surgicaltreatment available — lowers C-reactive protein by about 16percent,” Dr. John Morton, assistant professor of surgery atStanford, said in a statement.

“But we found that gastric bypass lowered it by 50 percent.That’s a pretty significant improvement over what’s beenconsidered state-of-the-art therapy.”

Morton’s colleague, Dr. Brandon Williams, presented thefindings to a meeting of the American Society for BariatricSurgery in Orlando.

Gastric bypass surgery makes the stomach smaller sopatients can eat less, and cuts out a long stretch of smallintestine so fewer nutrients are absorbed .

The Society estimates that 141,000 of the procedures weredone in 2004. It is not risk-free — about 2 percent ofpatients die.

“This operation is reserved for morbidly obese people, notthe pleasantly plump,” Morton said in a statement.

“The risk of premature death for the morbidly obese isabout three times the risk of the general population.”

The Society says 15 million people in the United States aremorbidly obese, as measured by body mass index, which is aperson’s weight in kilograms divided by height in meterssquared.

A BMI of 30 is obese and one of 40 qualifies as morbidlyobese. Someone 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighing 265 pounds(120 kg) would have a BMI of 40.

The improvements in heart disease risk factors extendedbeyond what would have been expected due to weight loss alone.”We’re not sure why, but the process of bypassing the stomachmight induce some changes in both lipid and inflammatorymetabolism,” Morton said.

“I think our findings show that this is not in any sense acosmetic procedure — that it really does benefit the health ofthese patients,” Williams said.