Metabolic Disease Puts Up a Fight: Are diet and exercise helpful for the heart?

Given the multisystemic nature of the metabolic syndrome, the field is now aiming at perusing both intrinsic and environmental factors from a biological and therapeutic standpoint. Physicians often advise obese individuals suffering from type 2 diabetes to lose weight through exercise and healthy diets. Although it may be an obvious recommendation, a large study has recently shown that weight loss achieved through these lifestyle changes does not significantly reduce cardiovascular disease events in these patients compared to conventional diabetes care. In 'Bedside to Bench', Julie A. Lovshin and Daniel J. Drucker discuss the limitations of this study, the conclusions that can be drawn regarding the true benefit of weight loss in this context and the molecular factors that deserve further attention at the bench in light of this trial. In 'Bench to Bedside', Eleftheria Maratos-Flier examines the role of antidiabetic drugs in both host and gut microbiota metabolism. These effects in the intestinal flora support advocating an increase in our understanding of how the gut microbiome affects obesity for finding the means to harness its therapeutic potential.