A fasting-mimicking diet programme reduces abdominal adipose tissue while preserving abdominal muscle mass in persons with type 2 diabetes
A 12-month randomized trial in 100 people with type 2 diabetes treated in primary care.
Nutr Metab Cardiovasc Dis, 2025. Schoonakker MP, et al.
Funding and competing interests (as published with the paper): Declaration of competing interest All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form at http://www.icmje.org/coi_disclosure.pdf (available on request from the corresponding author) and declare: financial support was received from Health∼Holland, Top Sector Life Sciences & Health, the Dutch Diabetes Foundation, and L-Nutra for the project; no other relationships or activities that could appear to have influenced the submitted work.
- Study type
- Human clinical trial (randomized, n=100)
- Journal
- Nutr Metab Cardiovasc Dis
- Published
- 2025
- Authors
- Schoonakker MP, et al.
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.numecd.2025.104111
- PubMed ID
- 40425403
Summary
One hundred people with type 2 diabetes who were using metformin, or diet alone, for glucose control were randomly assigned to a Fasting Mimicking Diet (FMD) for five consecutive days each month plus usual care, or to usual care only, for 12 months. Abdominal visceral fat, abdominal subcutaneous fat and abdominal muscle area were measured by MRI. Eighty-nine participants completed baseline visits including the MRI.
The authors reported that after 12 months the diet group had lost more abdominal visceral fat and more abdominal subcutaneous fat than the control group. They reported an estimated difference in abdominal muscle area whose confidence interval included zero, and described muscle area as unaffected. They reported that the changes in the two fat measures were strongly associated with the change in HbA1c and moderately associated with other metabolic measures.
Participants were people with type 2 diabetes managed on metformin or diet alone in primary care, not a general wellness population. L-Nutra, Prolon's parent company, provided part of the funding for the project. The outcomes are MRI fat and muscle measurements, not clinical events. The links between fat loss and the metabolic measures are associations within the trial and do not establish that one caused the other. Eleven of the hundred randomized participants did not complete baseline imaging.
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