Gastric bypass surgery has a miraculous effect on 80 percent of recipients also suffering from type 2 diabetes. Within two or three days after surgery to reduce the size of their stomachs and small intestines, their type 2 diabetes disappears. Poof ... just like that. Mysteriously, it occurs before any weight loss. This is striking, considering type 2 diabetes develops in 95 percent of morbidly obese people.

A research team at Swansea University in Wales is on the hunt to find out why. They are focusing on a protein, Glucagon Like Peptide (GLP-1), which is produced in the small intestine. Dr. Stephens from the research team explains that overweight people with type 2 tend to have lower levels of GLP-1, and the research is measuring whether GLP-1 levels return to normal following bariatric surgery. The researchers want to know if the surgery restores the production of GLP-1, and if so, why.

Dr. Stephens believes their efforts will not only help medicine understand how type 2 diabetes develops in overweight people, it can also provide new evidence for the development of a non-surgical treatment. Read more at News Medical-Net.

Trawling through the news, I came upon this awful story from Wales: a fourteen-year-old girl who died suddenly on November 30, 2006, turns out to have been diabetic ... only no one knew it when she was alive. An inquest by the Cardiff Coroner's Court concluded yesterday that the girl, Natasha Leigh Roberts, was suffering from pneumonia caused by undiagnosed diabetes. Her parents, Jenipher Perry and Stephen White, have said they encourage other parents to be vigilant for the disease now they have discovered the awful cause of Natasha's death.

Natasha was not diagnosed as diabetic even though she was clearly unwell in the months prior to her death. According to this article, Natasha's parents noticed the decline in their daughter's health. She had lost weight and was complaining of exhaustion in the weeks leading up to her death. Said her grandmother, Lily Ayres, "Natasha was always a healthy-looking plump girl until about a year ago. I reckon she would have only weighed about five or six stone [by the time of her death]." That would convert to about seventy to eighty pounds. Ayres went on to say that Natasha looked "awful" the day before she died. It is also reported that the girl had taken time off school due to feeling unwell and staff at her school were worried about her. Then, one morning, her mom went into her room to check on her and found her in bed, not breathing. Too late.

How disturbing and sad this story is. Was a doctor consulted? Did the teachers at school contact the parents? Why didn't the parents do something, for heaven's sake? Uh oh. There it goes: the so-human urge to play The Blame Game. Or ... maybe this impulse is a good one. If people can learn a lesson from the story by understanding why this child fell through the cracks and did not receive treatment, perhaps other lives can be saved.