Can weight loss decrease heart disease in type 2 diabetes?

Can weight loss decrease heart disease in type 2 diabetes? That’s the question being asked by Harvard researchers and others based at three Boston medical centers. In a nationwide study conducted locally at Massachusetts General Hospital, Joslin Diabetes Center and Beth Israel-Deaconess Medical Center, researchers will gain valuable information about the relationship between weight loss and better health for diabetics. The three institutions, which jointly make up one of the study’s 16 research sites in the United States, are seeking to enroll a total of 313 volunteers for the study over the next two years. The study itself will go on for 12 years. Funded by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), it is the largest study on the effects of weight-loss interventions ever funded by the NIH. David M. Nathan is the local principal investigator of the study and director of the Diabetes Center at Massachusetts General Hospital. Nathan is professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School