It’s not the thing most people want to think about as they are wheeled into liposuction surgery: Will the fat come back, and if so, where?
That, however, is exactly what Dr. Robert Eckel, a University of Colorado researcher, wants to know.
Eckel, a professor of medicine in the endocrinology, metabolism and diabetes division of CU’s medical school, has a $1.6 million National Institutes of Health grant to find the answers.
The study, begun in 2004, is designed to determine whether fat returns after liposuction. And if so, does it return in everyone?
“There’s a lot of money being made on liposuction,” Eckel said. So, he said, it would be good “to know who it works on.”
In 2005, liposuction was the most common cosmetic surgical procedure in the U.S. – with 324,000 people spending more than $722 million, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.
Most plastic surgeons assume that scarring after liposuction prevents fat from coming back to the area from which it was taken, said Dr. Troy Donahoo, a Kaiser Permanente endocrinologist.
“I think Bob’s study is one of the first to look at the markers of where does it come back,” Donahoo said.
Learning more about fat may ultimately enable researchers to design targeted therapies to relocate fat or zap it entirely, Eckel said.
First, he and his research team are analyzing fat from study participants by performing biopsies to learn more about specific genes and proteins that determine who gets fat and where.
In return, some participants get liposuction practically free – having to pay only for the operating room.
Those in the control group may get surgery when the study is complete. Both groups – and any fat they may gain – are monitored for three years.
The study is recruiting women and men 18 to 50 years old who are of normal weight or slightly obese and who don’t have diabetes, don’t smoke and have not had liposuction or gastric bypass surgery.
Eckel is hoping to enroll a total of 54 people in the study.
Pam, a 42-year-old Aurora resident – one of the 22 people already participating – got her surgery in December.
No one outside her family knows she had the procedure, which is why Pam didn’t want her last name used. But people notice the difference, she said.
“People say, ‘Oh, Pam, you look great, what did you do?”‘ she said.
Like all those eligible for the study, Pam is not obese.
“I had these moguls on my upper hips and just below the waist. It was genetic. I always worked out. I was a bodybuilder in college,” she said. “But I never could get rid of those moguls.”
After three children, the moguls started to look more like cinnamon rolls, Pam said.
They had to go.
The bad news is that so far, most studies have found that while liposuction may do a lot for self-esteem, it has few health benefits, Donahoo said.
When it comes to weight gain, Donahoo said, “prevention is far better than trying to treat it.”
Eckel said researchers have been monitoring some volunteers for more than a year but so far do not have compiled results.
Individuals interested in participating in the study can contact the endocrinology division at 303-724-3974.
Staff writer Karen Augé can be reached at 303-820-1733 or kauge@denverpost.com.
