Gastroenterology & Endocrinology - Ask the Expert
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Transforming the Obesity Landscape A leading clinical scientist and expert on how the gut and brain communicate, Professor Carel Le Roux was named at the Irish Research Council Researcher of the Year for 2023. He was awarded the prestigious prize for his work on developing safer and more effective treatments of obesity. Director of the Metabolic Medicine Group affiliated with the UCD Diabetes Complications Re-search Centre (DCRC) in the UCD Conway Institute, his research has focused on the impact of diet, exercise, medication and surgery, including bariatric surgery, on enhancing gut-brain signalling for the management and treatment of the disease of obesity. Professor Le Roux was the recipient of a ¤600,000 IRC Laureate funding award in 2018, which he credits with enabling him to lead the development of the ¤16 million European project SOPHIA (Stratification of Obesity Phenotypes to Optimise Future Obesity Therapy) which is addressing obesity and its complications such as type 2 diabetes and chronic kidney disease. We recently spoke to Professor Le Roux to find out more about this important work. Professor Le Roux studied medicine at the University of Pretoria in South Africa and completed his PhD at Imperial College London before becoming Faculty, which is where he started the first obesity clinic. He explains, “The clinic was really a combination of looking at obesity, type 2 diabetes and hypertension. But it brought the field from which I was able to drive my understanding.” When he moved to University College Dublin, Professor Le Roux established a research unit at St Vincent’s, at which many clinical trials have taken place. He says, “It was really in this period from 2012 until now that we have witnessed an incredible increase in powerful treatments that offer the opportunity to change the disease of obesity.” You recently won Researcher of the Year Award: Tell us more about this research “I was very fortunate to win this accolade, which was really based
Professor Carel le Roux
“Our biggest challenge is people that are living with obesity don’t think they have a disease. If people don’t think they have a disease, they do not treat it like a disease….. Furthermore, as an equivalent, many doctors don’t think it is a disease. There still exists an approach and belief that patients need to try harder and get ready for change instead of treating them like we would treat anyone with other conditions”
on our translational research. We were able to show in the basic laboratory, animal house and with clinical research that we can treat the disease of obesity by using signals in the gut and we can enhance the signal through nutritional therapies, through pharmacological therapies and surgical therapies. “If we treat this disease, it becomes under control and can therefore remain under control in the long-term, provided the treatments are sustained. However, if we are able to control
the disease of obesity, that disrupts other diseases such as diabetes or disrupts cardiovascular disease or disrupts chronic kidney disease. So, our work went on to show that you can also reverse the complications of obesity. You can put type 2 diabetes into remission, you can put early chronic kidney disease into remission, and we can now see that we can prevent cardiovascular events as well. “My research started from studying the pathophysiology of the disease, understanding the treatments, and now using the
treatments, not for weight loss but for health gains. “This research takes us back to where we started, now we have so much more insight into the disease, we are understanding the pathophysiology of the disease, and we are now understanding how to approach it. “So the next steps for us lie in understanding that it is not one disease but a cluster of diseases. Now we are deconstructing obesity and if we can define it then we can be more effective at targeting patients who are at the
HOSPITALPROFESSIONALNEWS.IE | HPN • MARCH 2024
