Early-onset type 2 diabetes: remission in 54% of participants in a 24-week trial
· BehindLines newsroom
A clinical trial named RESET for Remission reports that a programme combining a very low-calorie diet with supervised exercise brought type 2 diabetes into remission in 54% of young adults in the tested group. ScienceDaily relayed the results on 30 October 2026; Medical Dialogues had already covered them on 7 October. The study appeared in The Lancet Regional Health – Americas and was presented at the annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD).
A trial of 96 adults
According to these sources, the researchers, including Kaberi Dasgupta (McGill University, Montreal) and Thomas Yates (University of Leicester), enrolled 96 adults aged 18 to 45 with early-onset type 2 diabetes and obesity, not using insulin, across three centres (Leicester, McGill, University of Alberta). Fifty were assigned to the programme and 46 to usual care. Average age was 38 and average body mass index 35.2. Recruitment ran from September 2021 to June 2025, and 90% of participants completed the final assessment.
What the programme involved
For 12 weeks, participants followed a diet of 800 to 900 kilocalories a day, with two supervised exercise sessions a week and one on their own. Weeks 13 to 24 used a weight-maintenance diet with continued independent exercise. Blood-sugar medications were stopped under supervision at the start. Remission was defined as an HbA1c level below 6.5% with no glucose-lowering drugs for at least 12 weeks.
Results and limits
At 24 weeks, 27 of 50 participants (54%) in the programme group were in remission, versus 2 of 46 (4%) with usual care. Medical Dialogues reports an adjusted odds ratio of 21.6. Average weight fell by 8.4 kg, compared with 1.2 kg in the other group. No serious adverse events were reported; mild effects such as constipation, headache, dizziness or fatigue affected 43 people in the programme group against 6 controls. The authors point to several limits: an open-label design, a selected population, no diet-only group to isolate the effect of exercise, and six months of follow-up, too brief to judge how long remission lasts; missing remission data were counted as failures. Remission is not a permanent cure. This article relays study results and is not medical advice.