Roth: diabetes and receptors

Abstract

the traditional treatments of diabetes, laboratory studies were uncovering the reason. A radioimmunoassay for insulin—the first such assay ever developed—was used by Solomon A. Berson, MD, Rosalyn S. Yalow, PhD, in the early 1960s to measure circulating levels of insulin in diabetics. Their data showed that only 20% to 30% of diabetics are insulin-deficient, Roth recalls, and that in the majority of cases, diabetes is not an insulin-deficiency disease. These findings came at the time that Roth was finishing his internship residency at Washington University. Subsequently, he was awarded a fellowship by the American Diabetes Association to study in Berson Yalow's laboratory, where he worked on a radioimmunoassay for growth hormone. (Roth has decided views on the role of a physician going into basic research. You start out with a severe disadvantage in formal scientific training. But you have the advantage that