New gastric balloon works on demand

The development could offer an alternative for people unwilling to undergo more invasive treatments such as gastric bypass surgery, or who do not respond well to weight-loss drugs, the researchers said.

“The basic concept is we can have this balloon that is dynamic, so it would be inflated right before a meal and then you wouldn't feel hungry. Then it would be deflated in between meals,” said Giovanni Traverso, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, a gastroenterologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and the senior author of the study detailed in Device.

Approved for use in the United States, saline filled gastric balloons stimulate a sense of fullness in the stomach, and studies have shown that they work well, but the benefits are often temporary.

“Gastric balloons do work initially. Historically, what has been seen is that the balloon is associated with weight loss. But then in general, the weight gain resumes the same trajectory,” Traverso said in a statement. “What we reasoned was perhaps if we had a system that simulates that fullness in a transient way, meaning right before a meal, that could be a way of inducing weight loss.”