Gastric bypass and sleeve gastrectomy devices may be more effective in treating Type II diabetes than medication, according to a new study released at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology in Chicago today.
The results could provide a boost for players in the bariatric surgery market, particularly Allergan (NYSE:AGN) and Johnson & Johnson‘s (NYSE:JNJ) Ethicon Endo-Surgery business unit, which provided the study with its funding and primary instruments.
The study compared intensive medical therapy alone versus medical therapy plus Roux-en-Y gastric bypass or sleeve gastrectomy in 150 obese patients with uncontrolled Type II diabetes.
Forty-two percent of the gastric bypass patients and 37% of the sleeve-gastrectomy group met the study’s primary endpoint of glycated hemoglobin levels lower than 6%, compared with just 12% of the medical therapy cohort.
Perhaps more significant may be the study’s secondary conclusion that “many patients in the surgical groups, particularly those in the gastric-bypass group, achieved glycemic control without the use of diabetes medications.”
Among patients in the sleeve gastrectomy group, 28% who met the primary endpoint required the use of “one or more glucose-lowering drugs.”
However, “most differences between the gastric bypass group and the sleeve gastrectomy group were not significant, although it should be noted that the study was not adequately powered to detect modest differences between these 2 surgical procedures.”
AGN shares were up 1.4% to $94.95 on Wall Street today, while JNJ climbed just under 0.9% to $65.12 as of about 1:30 p.m.
