Collaboration between basic science researchers and bariatric surgeons is a win/win proposition: view from the chair

Abstract

Bariatric surgery in humans offers a window of opportunity to further our understanding of obesity and associated diseases. In the morbidly obese subjects, physiological disturbances are amplified and their extreme manifestations are more easily measured. The significant and predictable effects of bariatric surgery present a striking contrast to preoperative morbid conditions. The bariatric procedure is a reproducible therapy occurring at a precise time point; this facilitates the recording of preoperative and postoperative parameters over a short period of time, with some assurance that the contrasted conditions will confirm or disprove hypotheses with manageable numbers of subjects, thus providing an economy of means and efforts in a shorter time frame.

Effect of interactions of polymorphisms in the Melanocortin‐4 receptor gene with dietary factors on the risk of obesity and Type 2 diabetes: a systematic review

“…1). Full texts of the remaining 35 relevant articles were screened against the inclusion criteria and 21 papers were excluded for the following reasons: they investigated interactions between genetic risk score and diet [9,10]; they included antagonists or agonists of MC4R [11][12][13][14], they studied epigenetic changes in the MC4R gene [15][16][17][18][19]; they studied weight loss attributable to bariatric surgery [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28]; and lack of access to full-text articles. A total of 14 studies met the selection criteria and were included in the present systematic review.…”