It’s never too late for obese adults to improve their heart risks through diet and exercise, the results of a new small study suggests.

The researchers, who enrolled 27 obese men and women age 65 or older, found that calorie cutting and exercise helped participants shed pounds and lower their blood pressure, blood sugar and blood fats called triglycerides.

What’s more, there was a sharp drop in the number with metabolic syndrome, a collection of conditions that raise a person’s risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

The findings appear in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Diet changes and exercise have been shown to improve heart disease risk factors in young and middle-aged obese adults, but less is known about the benefits for older adults.

In fact, there’s some controversy over advocating weight loss at older ages, according to the authors of the new study. For one, a heavier weight is relatively less important in the health risks of an elderly person compared with a younger adult. In addition, many older adults are frail, which can make lifestyle changes difficult.

But the new findings show that older obese adults can indeed alter their lifestyle, and benefit from it, according to Dr. Dennis T. Villareal of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

“We demonstrate that older adults can successfully lose weight and are compliant with interventions,” he told Reuters Health.

Beyond that, they can also reap the potential heart benefits seen in studies of younger obese adults, according to Villareal.

He and his colleagues based their findings on a 6-month study of sedentary, obese adults randomly assigned to follow diet and exercise therapy (17 subjects) or to serve as a non-exercising comparison group (10 subjects). All of them had mild to moderate physical limitations and nearly all had metabolic syndrome. The average body mass index was 30 or higher.

Those with metabolic syndrome had at least three of a conditions that increased the risk of heart disease, including high blood pressure, high triglycerides, high blood sugar and abdominal obesity.

Over six months, the treatment group cut calories and attended group exercise classes three days a week. In the end, they lost an average of 18 pounds, versus no weight change in the comparison group. The number with metabolic syndrome fell by 59 percent, while the comparison group again showed no change.

More studies are needed to see if this translates into less heart disease and a longer life, according to the researchers.

For now, older adults who want to make lifestyle changes should talk to their doctors about the best and safest ways to do so, Villareal said.

SOURCE: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, December 2006.