The McGill University Health Centre wrote on 23 October about RESET for Remission, a trial led by Kaberi Dasgupta at the centre's research institute and Tom Yates at the University of Leicester, published in The Lancet Regional Health – Americas and presented at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes meeting in Milan. The trial enrolled 96 adults aged 18 to 45 who had type 2 diabetes and obesity and were not using insulin, at centres in Montreal, Edmonton, and Leicester. For 12 weeks, 50 of them ate 800 to 900 calories a day, mostly meal-replacement shakes and bars, and did aerobic and strength work twice a week with a supervisor and once on their own. For the next 12 weeks they moved to ordinary food meant to hold the loss, and kept exercising on their own. Remission meant blood sugar below the level used to diagnose diabetes, with no diabetes medicine for at least 12 weeks. Twenty-seven of the 50, 54 percent, reached that mark. Two of the 46 people in usual care did, about 4 percent. The centre said the programme group lost about 7.5 kilograms more than usual care, and that the loss was fat while fat-free mass held. Fitness rose about 10 percent relative to body weight, grip got stronger, and blood pressure and resting heart rate fell. They also reported fewer symptoms of low mood, less distress tied to diabetes, and a better quality of life. Early side effects, including constipation, headache, dizziness, and fatigue, eased. The paper, as the centre describes it, recorded no serious adverse events.
A few months of structured meals and someone counting the repetitions is a route back that does not start in an operating room.
This is six months in 96 people, not a cure and not a result for everyone with type 2 diabetes. There was no diet-only group, so the trial cannot separate the exercise from the calories or from the extra time with staff. It was open-label. People who needed insulin were not included. Follow-up stopped at 24 weeks, so the centre cannot say the remission lasts once the structure ends. The 7.5 kilogram figure is the centre's account of the adjusted difference.
