Doctors who have turned surgery into a popular treatment for obesity are setting their sights on a burgeoning new market: diabetes patients.

A growing amount of research suggests that bariatric surgery, which shrinks the stomach and sometimes reroutes the intestines, has a lasting effect on the most common form of diabetes, and not just because patients lose weight. Studies have found that more than 75 percent of patients with this type of diabetes who undergo the surgery see their disease disappear. They can go on to live diabetes-free without insulin or other medicines.

Even advocates of bariatric surgery say it’s too early to recommend it for the broad mass of diabetics. Bariatric surgery can lead to serious complications such as nutritional deficiency. The death rate from the procedure is estimated to be between one in 100 and one in 1,000. An array of medicines, plus better diet and exercise, can treat diabetes effectively without invasive procedures.

Still, some doctors believe surgery could be a new weapon against a disease that affects 250 million people world-wide. “The idea that you could induce long-term remission in diabetic patients without medication is unprecedented,” says Francesco Rubino, a surgeon at Catholic University in Rome who is one of the leaders in the field. “Clearly there’s something big going on here that can’t be ignored.”

Studies into bariatric surgery’s impact on diabetes are shedding light on little-understood hormones that reside in the small intestine and help keep the body’s sugar levels in balance. Researchers theorize that in diabetic patients, food causes these hormones to go awry, but when surgery alters the intestinal tract and diverts food away from them, the disease can quickly recede. Understanding how this happens could lead to new medicines and nonsurgical strategies to fight diabetes.

— The Wall Street Journal