New gastric balloon simulating digestion could cut food intake

From weight loss jabs to vibrating pills, the obesity crisis has spawned myriad innovations to help people shed pounds.

- Nicola Davis

Now scientists have overhauled the humble gastric balloon, producing a device that inflates and deflates to keep it effective for longer.

Gastric balloons have been around for decades; they are temporarily placed in the stomach and inflated with air or fluid to create a feeling of fullness and reduce the desire to eat.

But over time these devices become less effective, with weight loss often hitting a plateau—possibly because the body grows accustomed to the sensation the balloon creates.

Now experts say they have created a gastric balloon that can be inflated just before eating and contracted afterwards, simulating the presence, and emptying, of food in the stomach.

"What we try to do here is, in essence, simulate the mechanical effects of having a meal," said Giovanni Traverso, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a gastroenterologist at Brigham and Women's hospital, and the senior author of the study.