New nonsurgical weight-loss treatment curbs hunger, melts away pounds

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Battling bulge can often be a frustrating fight—with tedious calorie counting, rigorous exercise regimens, plus invasive and expensive stomach-shrinking surgeries. But a new method to offload the flab promises to be a quick and simple treatment that cuts cravings and leads to sustainable weight loss.

The non-surgical procedure works using tiny, injectable beads that restrict blood flow to the part of the stomach that releases the hunger-sparking hormone, ghrelin. In a pilot clinical trial with seven severely obese patients, the method successfully curbed hunger and trimmed an average of 13.3 percent of excess weight after six months.

Though the clinical data is still preliminary and in a small number of patients, doctors are hopeful that the method, called bariatric arterial embolization (BAE), will be a safe and effective tool for slashing obesity numbers. "These early results demonstrate that BAE appears to be effective in helping patients lose a significant amount of weight in the short and intermediate term," lead author Clifford Weiss, associate professor of radiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. said in a statement. Weiss and colleagues presented the clinical results so far at the Society of Interventional Radiology's 2016 Annual Scientific Meeting in Vancouver.

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