TRIP

Healthy lifestyle is better than drugs for reversing metabolic syndrome

The Diabetes Elf, 2012

This systematic review addressed methods of preventing progression from or pre-diabetes to full type 2 diabetes or cardiovascular disease.
In people with metabolic syndrome, what interventions exist that can prevent progression to type 2 diabetes?
The reviewers only included randomised trials in their review.  The trials did not provide enough data to perform meta-analysis for the outcomes of mortality, incidence of type 2 diabetes or cardiovascular disease.
However, the reviewers were able to perform a meta-analysis for reversal of metabolic syndrome, using data from 13 studies  involving 3907 participants.
They concluded that both lifestyle and drug treatments are effective at reversing, and that lifestyle interventions are more effective than drugs.
Whether the specific interventions described in each study are similar enough to warrant being combined in a meta-analysis.
The quality of the individual trials.  The reviewers comment on the need for longer term studies that report on type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular outcomes and mortality.