Does bariatric surgery modify the lipid metabolism?

Background and aim: The goals of bariatric surgery are to improve the quality of life by lowering body mass index (BMI) but also to treat obesity comorbidities and consequently prolong life expectancy. One of the mechanisms of reducing the cardiovascular risk associated with obesity is the positive metabolic response after surgery. The aim of our study was to evaluate the impact of bariatric surgery on main components of lipid metabolism. Methods: 85 obese patients from a prospectively collected database, operated between June 2012 and March 2015 were included. Basal, 3 and 6 months after surgery serum concentrations of triglycerides, total cholesterol, low density lipoproteins (LDL)-cholesterol and the high density lipoproteins (HDL)cholesterol were measured. Results: Mean age was 39.7 +/- 9.5 years, mean BMI was 43.5 +/- 6.4 kg/m(2). The bariatric intervention was laparoscopic gastric sleeve (LSG). CTCAE 3-4 morbidity rate was 4.1%. Initial and final lipid profile data were available for 40 patients. At six months after the intervention, we find significant improvements of triglycerides (P-value = 0.004, decreased by 25.7%). Despite the decreasing trend of cholesterol, we could not find a statistically significant reduction of total cholesterol (P-value = 0.06, decreased by 5%). The changes of LDL-cholesterol and HDL cholesterol were not statistically significant. Conclusions: The positive effect of bariatric surgery was mainly on triglyceride and total cholesterol. The main drawback of the study was the small lot of patients. A larger study and a longer follow-up is necessary for establishing the metabolic impact for this bariatric surgery procedure