Journal of diabetes
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Branched-chain amino acids (BCAA) have increasingly been studied as playing a role in diabetes, with the PubMed search string "diabetes" AND "branched chain amino acids" showing particular growth in studies of the topic over the past decade (Fig. ). In the Young Finn's Study, BCAA and, to a lesser extent, the aromatic amino acids phenylalanine and tyrosine were associated with insulin resistance (IR) in men but not in women, whereas the gluconeogenic amino acids alanine, glutamine, or glycine, and several other amino acids (i.e. histidine, arginine, and tryptophan) did not show an association with IR. Obesity may track more strongly than metabolic syndrome and diabetes with elevated BCAA. ⋯ A final fascinating preliminary set of observations is that of the effects of empagliflozin on metabolomics; evidence of increased Krebs cycle activation and of higher levels of BCAA metabolites, such as acylcarnitines, suggests that sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibition may, to some extent, involve BCAA metabolism. Certainly, we do not yet have a full understanding of these complex associations. However, the suggestion of multiple roles of BCAA in the development of IR promises to be important and to lead to the development of novel effective T2D therapies.