Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine the status of glucose transporter type-4 (GLUT4) gene expression in the peripheral blood leukocytes of type 2 diabetic patients and explore the correlation of GLUT4 expression with homeostasis model assessment-insulin resistance with a view to validate GLUT4 as a relatively less invasive alternate marker for insulin resistance. A total of 48 subjects were recruited. Among them, 23 subjects were diabetic and 25 were age, sex and body mass index-matched non-diabetic healthy control subjects. Insulin resistance, beta cell function and insulin sensitivity were assessed from the fasting blood samples. The mRNA levels of GLUT4 gene in the peripheral blood leukocytes were quantified by reverse transcriptase PCR. There was no significant alteration of GLUT4 gene status between type 2 diabetes mellitus and control. The GLUT4 gene expression showed a negative trend in the relationship with fasting glucose, HbA1c, insulin and insulin resistance in diabetic patients. In conclusion, the GLUT4 gene expression in the peripheral blood leukocytes cannot be used as a marker of insulin resistance.
Highlights
Type 2 diabetes mellitus is a chronic, progressive, and multifactorial metabolic disease defined by the presence of chronic hyperglycemia
The aims of the present study were to investigate the status of glucose transporter type-4 (GLUT4) gene expression in peripheral blood leukocytes of type 2 diabetes mellitus patients and to find out its relationship with glycemic, insulinemic and homeostasis model assessmentbased insulin resistance status in those patients with a view to assess the potentiality of GLUT4 gene expression in leukocytes as a simple and suitable marker for insulin resistance
The diabetic group of this study showed marked hyperglycemia, insulin resistance and beta-cell dysfunction
Summary
Type 2 diabetes mellitus is a chronic, progressive, and multifactorial metabolic disease defined by the presence of chronic hyperglycemia. Assessment of insulin resistance status is important to study the longitudinal effect of the intervention (with drug, diet or exercise) on insulin resistance. The assessment of true status of insulin resistance requires invasive procedure - euglycemic-hyperinsulinemic glucose clamp, which is experimentally demanding, complicated, and impractical when large scale epidemiological studies are involved. These methods are laborious, painstaking and expensive, and rarely used in large-scale clinical research and never used in clinical practice. It has been shown that homeostasis model assessment-based measure of insulin resistance cannot identify the true status of insulin resistance for certain situations like longitudinal interventional studies.[3, 4] So, it is necessary to develop another accurate yet relatively simple measure of insulin resistance
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
