Jobs Says He Is Being Treated for Nutritional

 Steve Jobs, after months of concern about his health and weight loss, said he is suffering from a nutritional ailment and that he plans to remain Apple Inc.’s chief executive officer during his treatment.

“I have been losing weight throughout 2008. The reason has been a mystery to me and my doctors,” Jobs, who turns 54 in February, said today in a statement. “After further testing, my doctors think they have found the cause -- a hormone imbalance that has been ‘robbing’ me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy.”

Jobs’s decision to talk openly about his health caps months of speculation that he may have to stop running Apple and hand the CEO job to Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook. Jobs, who had successful surgery for a form of pancreatic cancer in 2004, is seen by investors as critical to Apple’s future. After returning in 1997, he turned the money-losing Macintosh computer maker into a consumer-electronics juggernaut with the iPod and iPhone.

“It is widely recognized both inside and outside of Apple that Steve Jobs is one of the most talented and effective CEOs in the world,” Apple’s board said in a separate statement. “If there ever comes a day when Steve wants to retire or for other reasons cannot continue to fulfill his duties as Apple’s CEO, you will know it.”

Although he has started treatment, Jobs said his doctors advised him that it may take until at least late spring to regain weight.

Remedy

“The remedy for this nutritional problem is relatively simple and straightforward,” Jobs said. “I will be the first one to step up and tell our board of directors if I can no longer continue to fulfill my duties.”

Apple, based in Cupertino, California, rose $2.25, or 2.5 percent, to $93 in trading before U.S. exchanges opened. The shares fell 57 percent in 2008.

Jobs, who co-founded Apple in 1976, transformed the company by updating the Mac with sleeker and thinner models, including the iMac in 1998 and the ultra-thin MacBook Air notebook last year. His focus on stylish and simple-to-use gadgets won over millions of buyers, turning the iPod media player and iPhone handset into best sellers.

Rumors about Jobs’s health resurfaced in June after he appeared visibly thinner at Apple’s conference for developers. The company said at the time that he was suffering from a “common bug” and declined to discuss his health, saying it was a private matter. The rumors persisted as he continued to appear frail at company events later in the year, and investors responded by punishing the shares with each new report of Jobs’s ill health.

Health Rumors

On Oct. 3, an erroneous report on CNN’s iReport.com site said Jobs had suffered a heart attack, sending Apple’s shares down as much as 5.4 percent and cutting the company’s market value by at least $4.8 billion in the first hour of trading. The shares recovered some of that loss after Apple said the report was untrue.

Last month, Apple said Jobs wouldn’t deliver the keynote address at the Macworld Expo conference in San Francisco this week -- ending an 11-year run and renewing speculation about his health. Jobs, wearing his trademark black turtleneck sweater and blue jeans, has used the Macworld show to unveil new products, including the iPhone in 2007.

Jobs’s decision not to deliver the keynote “set off another flurry of rumors about my health, with some even publishing stories of me on my deathbed,” Jobs said in today’s statement.

Product Updates

The company probably won’t introduce any major new types of products and instead will use Macworld to update its Mac desktops and software, David Bailey, an analyst with Goldman Sachs Group Inc., told investors in a Dec. 31 report.

Apple said Dec. 16 that Phil Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, will speak tomorrow at Macworld in place of Jobs. The company also said this will be the last year it participates in the conference.

“I have given more than my all to Apple for the past 11 years,” Jobs wrote in the statement. “Now I’ve said more than I wanted to say, and all that I am going to say, about this.”

Jobs said in 2004 he had undergone surgery for a form of pancreatic cancer called islet cell neuroendocrine tumor. Neuroendocrine tumor is often less dangerous than typical pancreatic cancer, which kills more than 30,000 people in the U.S. annually, doctors said.

Hormone Imbalance

The pancreas contains islet cells, which make the hormones insulin and glucagon, both of which help keep blood sugar levels within a normal range, said Raji Annaswamy, an endocrinologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston. Neuroendocrine islet cells tumors can cause overproduction of either one, or other powerful hormones such as somatostatin or gastrin, which are involved in digestion.

“An imbalance in any of these hormones might lead to weight loss because of abnormalities in glucose and protein metabolism,” she said.

Tumors such as the one Jobs was thought to have are usually slow-growing, compared with typical pancreatic cancers that originate in the organ’s lining, said Simon Lo, director of the pancreatic and biliary diseases program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Patients whose cancer is diagnosed early and removed may live 10 years or longer, he said.

“It all depends on how aggressive the tumor is and how early it’s treated,” Lo said in a telephone interview. “Ten years is not unheard of, but that doesn’t mean that most people live 10 years.”

That’s in stark contrast to typical pancreatic cancer, which often kills its victims in six months to a year, Lo said. These cancers can spread extremely quickly to other organs, blocking and disrupting vital functions.