CHICAGO — Results from the 11-year-long Look AHEAD study found that an intensive lifestyle intervention was not statistically better than usual medical care in lowering the risk of cardiovascular disease, but was beneficial in reducing medications, hospitalizations, medical care costs, depression, and very high risk kidney disease, as well as in improving physical quality of life in obese individuals with type 2 diabetes.
The study results were presented at the American Diabetes Association’s 73rd Scientific Sessions® meeting and simultaneously published online in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Thomas A. Wadden, PhD, professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry and director of Penn's Center for Weight and Eating Disorders, served as principal investigator at the Penn trial site, one of 16 sites nationwide, and chaired the trial's committee that developed the weight loss intervention.
Researchers found that long-term weight loss was greater in the intensive intervention group. The intervention group lost 8.6 percent of initial weight the first year and maintained a loss of 6 percent at an average of 9.6 years of treatment. The control group lost 0.7 percent of their body weight the first year and concluded the trial with a loss of 3.5 percent.
"There are many positive health benefits of weight loss, including improving diabetes control, sleep apnea and urinary incontinence, as well as slowing the decline in physical functioning that occurs with aging," said Dr. Wadden.
"One reason that we may not have found differences between the two groups in the rates of heart attack and stroke is that both groups had excellent control of blood pressure and lipids, as a result of taking medications." By the end of the study, more than 85 percent of participants took blood pressure medications and 72 percent took statins to lower bad cholesterol. "There may not have been much room to reveal the effects of weight loss and physical activity on cardiovascular outcomes after controlling these health risks so well," noted Dr. Wadden.
For more information on this study, please visit the ADA press release or the publication in the New England Journal of Medicine.
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