The New England journal of medicine
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Impaired glucose tolerance often presages the development of non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus. We have studied insulin action and secretion in 24 Pima Indians before and after the development of impaired glucose tolerance and in 254 other subjects representing the whole spectrum of glucose tolerance, including subjects with overt non-insulin-dependent diabetes. The transition from normal to impaired glucose tolerance was associated with a decrease in glucose uptake during hyperinsulinemia, from 0.018 to 0.016 mmol per minute (from 3.3 to 2.8 mg per kilogram of fat-free body mass per minute) (P less than 0.0003). ⋯ This relative insulin deficiency first appears at the lower end of the second (diabetic) mode seen in population frequency distributions of plasma glucose concentrations. Our data show that impaired glucose tolerance in our study population is primarily due to impaired insulin action. In patients with non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, by contrast, impaired insulin action and insulin secretory failure are both present.
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To determine whether non-insulin-dependent diabetes is associated with specific alterations in the pattern of insulin secretion, we studied 16 patients with untreated diabetes and 14 matched controls. The rates of insulin secretion were calculated from measurements of peripheral C-peptide in blood samples taken at 15- to 20-minute intervals during a 24-hour period in which the subjects ate three mixed meals. Incremental responses of insulin secretion to meals were significantly lower in the diabetic patients (P less than 0.005), and the increases and decreases in insulin secretion after meals were more sluggish. ⋯ Pulses also appeared less regularly in the patients. During glucose clamping to produce hyperglycemia (glucose level, 16.7 mmol per liter [300 mg per deciliter]), the diabetic subjects secreted, on the average, 70 percent less insulin than matched controls (P less than 0.001). These data suggest that profound alterations in the amount and temporal organization of stimulated insulin secretion may be important in the pathophysiology of beta-cell dysfunction in diabetes.
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In fasting nondiabetic subjects, insulin is secreted in regular pulses every 12 to 15 minutes, but patients with non-insulin-dependent diabetes lack regular oscillatory insulin secretion. To investigate whether abnormal insulin oscillations are an early feature of diabetes, we studied 10 minimally glucose-intolerant first-degree relatives of patients with non-insulin-dependent diabetes and 10 controls matched for age and obesity. We performed a time-series analysis of fasting plasma insulin levels in blood samples obtained at 1-minute intervals for 150 minutes. ⋯ Similarly, Fourier transform analysis showed no significant peak in the relatives but the expected significant peak at 13 to 14 minutes in the controls (P less than 0.05). First-phase (0 to 10 minutes) insulin secretory responses to glucose administered intravenously were not significantly impaired in the relatives (geometric mean, 188 pmol per liter [26.2 mU per liter]; range of SD, +103 to -67 pmol per liter [+14.4 to -9.3 mU per liter]), as compared with the controls (geometric mean, 231 pmol per liter [32.2 mU per liter]; range of SD, +131 to -83 pmol per liter [+18.2 to -11.6 mU per liter]). We conclude that abnormal oscillatory insulin secretion may be an early phenomenon in the development of non-insulin-dependent diabetes.