Consume less calories and arrest type 2 diabetes

According  to a study consuming 850 calories a day for three months and then keeping the weight off can arrest type-2 diabetes for at least two years.

The GP-led programme worked for more than a third of participating
patients.

The study report support earlier worksuggesting weight loss is one key solution and offers more time off medication than previously thought.

Experts say it challenges the view that type-2 diabetes is always a life-long, progressive condition.

Type-2 diabetes affects one in 16 adults in the UK.

149 people in Scotland and Tyneside put on a 12-30-week low-calorie diet of shakes and drinks to help trigger weight loss.

They were then reintroduced to solid meals over the next few weeks.

After one year, 69 of them (46%) had gone into remission, compared with just 4% of people given standard treatment including pills.

And after two years, 53 of them (36%) remained off medication and in remission.

Participants were encouraged to keep healthy through monthly meetings and had the option of a "rescue" plan including using the liquid diet again, if they gained weight.

'Not all about weight'

Prof Roy Taylor, an investigator on the trial at Newcastle University, said: "These results are a significant development and finally pull down the curtain on the era of type-2 diabetes as an inevitably progressive disease."

Researchers said most of the weight-loss group whose diabetes had gone into remission had lost 10kg or more and maintained this weight loss during the trial.

But Dr Nicola Guess, at King's College London, said weight loss was not the whole story.

"Type-2 diabetes returned in a minority of people (16%) who kept off 15kg or more for two years," she said.

"Further research is needed to help us understand why this is.

"It is possible that these people had type-2 diabetes for longer before losing weight or perhaps there might be dietary or genetic factors which contributed."

The study was funded by The charity Diabetes UK. The body said the findings were exciting but added: "We know type-2 diabetes is a complex condition and this approach will not work for everyone."