The research used data from the Diabetes Remission Clinical Trial (DiRECT) and represents a collaboration between University of Bristol, University of Glasgow and Newcastle University. 

According to Diabetes UK, over 5 million people in the UK live with diabetes with 90% living with type 2. Weight loss is now a key intervention for patients with type 2 diabetes thanks to DiRECT, which found a primary-care deployed dietary weight loss programme – Counterweight-Plus – could put the condition into remission. The programme has been adopted by the NHS as a clinically proven intervention for type 2 diabetes patients. However, until now, its impact on patients’ wider metabolic health was largely unknown. 

To find out whether the weight loss benefits extend to wider metabolic health, Bristol Medical School researchers analysed levels of over 1,000 molecules or ‘metabolites’ in blood samples from 261 participants of the DiRECT trial before and one year after beginning the intervention. Collectively known as ‘the metabolome’, this approach gives researchers a detailed snapshot of cellular health at the time of sampling. 

Around 14% of all metabolites measured were found to be altered by the intervention. Many of the changes the researchers saw in response to the diet had previously been reported as moving in the opposite direction prior to type 2 diabetes onset. These changes were evident many weeks after the conclusion of the weight loss phase of the intervention suggesting sustained benefits to patient health. These findings support the growing consensus of the importance of excess weight as a contributor in the pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes and, as a treatment target.   

Read the full University of Bristol news item

‘The metabolomic signature of weight loss and remission in the Diabetes Remission Clinical Trial (DiRECT)’ by L Corbin et al. in Diabetologia