Liposuction Fails to Cut Obesity's Risk Factors

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Liposuction may let doctors extract body fat, but it does not cut the risk

of heart disease or diabetes the way losing weight would, researchers at

Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis reported.

Volunteers lost 12 percent of their weight -- most of it fat tissue -- but

their blood pressure, insulin levels, cholesterol levels and other risk

factors were unchanged.

" They're still obese. But had they lost that same amount of weight by

dieting, they would have exhibited considerable improvements in their

cardiovascular risk factors, " said Klein of the university's Center

for Human Nutrition.

The finding means liposuction is no substitute for weight loss produced by

diet and exercise, he said.

Liposuction is performed on nearly 400,000 people in the country each

year, making it the nation's most common cosmetic operation.

The study appears in today's New England Journal of Medicine.