Banding surgery offer patients with type 2 diabetes a greater chance of getting rid of their disease than conventional treatments, researchers revealed.

Patients suffering from type 2 diabetes that underwent gastric banding, a procedure, which allows only a small amount of food to be eaten at once, were five times as likely to cure two years later compared to those who tried to control their diabetes though diet, exercise and medication, the study showed.

Researcher John B. Dixon, MBBS, PhD, of Melbourne, Australia’s Monash University and colleagues included in their study just 60 patients who had been recently diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and had body mass index or BMI greater than 30 but less than 40. Body mass index is a ratio of height and weight. A BMI of 30 or greater is considered obese.

The patients were divided into two groups. First group were given gastric band surgery and the second group had normal weight-loss treatments.

Seventy-three percent of patients given gastric band surgery found their diabetes was in remission two years after the surgery. For those given normal weight-loss treatments, only 13 percent found their disease was in remission.

Patients who underwent surgery lost an average of 62 percent of their excess weight compared with an average loss of 4.3 percent in patients who did not have the surgery.

No patients suffered serious complications.

“An important finding of this study is that degree of weight loss, not the method, appears to be the major driver of glycaemic improvement and diabetes in remission in obese participants. This has important implications, as it suggests that intensive weight-loss therapy may be a more effective first step in the management of diabetes than simple lifestyle change,” Dixon said in the study.

Endocrinologist David E. Cummings, a professor of medicine at the University of Washington, Seattle said the evidence in favor of weight loss surgery as an early treatment for type 2 diabetes is mounting.

“I think it is reasonable to conclude that [weight loss] surgery should be offered to more people with diabetes,” he told in a commentary accompanying the study that appears in the today issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association.

Dr. Cummings and his colleague Dr. Davis Flum of the UW said policy and health leaders would need to balance the costs and risks of surgery against the chance of reversing diabetes. However, they added that “the insights already beginning to be gained by studying surgical interventions for diabetes may be the most profound since the discovery of insulin.”

Banding surgery has been growing at a rapid pace, with the number of procedures rising to 200,000 in the United States in 2006, from just 13,000 in 1998.