Gastric bypass surgery to treat obesity lowers the risk of heart disease even more than previously believed, US researchers reported on Thursday (June 30). Patients who got the surgery showed improved levels of three new measures of heart disease risk - C-reactive protein, lipoprotein A and homocysteine, the team at Stanford University School of Medicine found.
They measured these proteins, as well as cholesterol levels, in 371 patients before surgery and again a year later and found improvements to normal range in all of them. "Medication with statins - the most effective non-surgical treatment available - lowers C-reactive protein by about 16 percent," Dr John Morton, assistant professor of surgery at Stanford, said in a statement.