The intervention group did not have fewer cardiovascular events than the group receiving general diabetes support and education, but one positive factor we saw was that both groups had a low number of cardiovascular events compared to previous studies of people with diabetes,“ said Dr. Mary Evans, director of Special Projects in Nutrition, Obesity, and Digestive Diseases within the NIH’s National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), the study’s primary sponsor.
Type 2 diabetes — affecting nearly 24 million people in the United States alone — has increased in prevalence along with the country’s epidemic of overweight and obesity. Cardiovascular diseases are the most common cause of death among people with type 2 diabetes. Look AHEAD is the first study to examine the long-term effects of a lifestyle intervention on major cardiovascular disease events and death in adults with type 2 diabetes.
„Look AHEAD provides important, definitive information about the long-term health effects of weight loss in people with type 2 diabetes,“ said NIDDK Director Dr. Griffin P. Rodgers. „Beyond cardiovascular disease, this study and others have shown many other health benefits of weight loss through improved diet and increased physical activity. For example, for overweight and obese adults at high risk for diabetes, modest weight loss has been shown to prevent or delay developing type 2 diabetes.“
Participants were 45 to 76 years old when they enrolled in the study. Sixty percent of enrollees were women. More than 37 percent were from racial and ethnic minority groups. Researchers are now analyzing data to measure effects of the lifestyle intervention on subgroups, including racial and ethnic groups and people with a history of cardiovascular disease.
A review of almost 20,000 patients who have had weight-loss surgery has revealed that the procedure also reduced several risk factors for cardiovascular disease and improved the structure and function of the heart.
„Obesity is very bad for the heart,“ co-author Dr. Phil Schauer, director of the Bariatric & Metabolic Institute at the Cleveland Clinic, told CBSNews.com. „It’s not just a cosmetic issue. It has very serious effects on heart disease as well as other metabolic disease such as hypertension, elevated cholesterol and diabetes.“
More than one-third of the U.S. adult population is obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the World Health Organization reports about 2.8 million adults die each year from being overweight or obese.