Fatty Acids Ratio Can Predict Remission of Diabetes After Bariatric Surgery

Highlights

• Higher levels of serum stearic acid/palmitic acid (S/P) ratio increased the chances of diabetes remission after bariatric surgery.
• S/P ratio may serve as a diagnostic //marker in preoperative patient assessment.

The outcome of roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery can now be determined by assessing serum stearic acid/palmitic acid (S/P) ratio. "Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery (RYGB), one of the most commonly used bariatric surgical procedures, showed the different efficacy in obese patients with diabetes," said Wei Jia, Ph.D., a researcher involved in the work and associate director of the Cancer Epidemiology Program at the University of Hawaii Cancer Center, China.

"Our findings could help identify patients preoperatively who would respond most favorably to the surgery."

Endogenous fatty acid metabolism that results in elongation and desaturation lipid products is thought to play a role in the development of type 2 diabetes mellitus. Diabetics who undergo bariatric surgery have chances of recurrence but the reason remained unknown.

Jia and colleagues used two independent cohorts. The first was a longitudinal cohort of 38 obese patients with diabetes who achieved weight loss and diabetes remission after RYGB.

About 32 percent of these patients showed recurrence of diabetes at the second year follow-up examination. Those patients who had higher levels of S/P before surgery had greater possibilities for diabetes remission after surgery.

In the second cohort of 381 community-based human participants, overweight or obese patients with diabetes exhibited lower S/P than did body mass index-matched non-diabetic patients, which highlight the specific product-to-precursor ratios as novel markers in preoperative assessment of bariatric surgery.

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Adding the S/P ratio to the previously reported clinical panel of diabetes duration, HbA1c level, and fasting C-peptide level contributed a significant increase in the predictive potential.

"This is a very important new picture in the bariatric surgery field," said Thoru Pederson, Ph.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. "Both the morbidity that necessitates the procedure and the procedure itself are steep challenges, and this study has the potential to greatly benefit patients going forward."

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Reference

1. Linjing Zhao et al., Serum stearic acid/palmitic acid ratio as a potential predictor of diabetes remission after Roux-en-Y gastric bypass in obesity, FASEB (2016) doi: 10.1096/fj.201600927R.

Source-Medindia