Studies on insulin secretion and clearance in obese and diabetic children (7-11 years old) and adolescents (12-16 years old) investigation by oral glucose tolerance tests (O-GTT)

Abstract

We analyzed O-GTT obtained from 375 children (group A; 7-11 years old) and adolescents (group B; 12-16 years old), including 96 normal non-obese cases, 266 simple obese cases (172 with normal O-GTT, 79 with border line type O-GTT and 15 with diabetic type O-GTT), 8 obese NIDDM cases and 5 non-obese NIDDM cases. The results were as follows; 1) The levels of epsilon CPR (in terms of total sum of the values measured at 0, 30, 60, 120 and 180 minutes on O-GTT) in the obese children and adolescents were only 1.5 and 1.2 times as high as in the control group. The levels of epsilon CPR/epsilon IRI molar ratio in the control group were 2.0 and 2.3 times as high as in the obese children and adolescents. These data suggest that hyperinsulinemia in the obese children and adolescents is caused mainly by decreased hepatic insulin extraction rather than by increased insulin secretion. 2) In the non-obese NIDDM adolescents, the levels of epsilon CPR decreased to about 3/4 of those in the control group; in contrast, the epsilon CPR/epsilon IRI molar ratio increased. Therefore, it seems that there is increased hepatic insulin extraction as well as decreased insulin secretion in the non-obese NIDDM adolescents. 3) In the obese NIDDM adolescents, the levels of epsilon CPR were nearly the same as in the control group and the epsilon CPR/epsilon IRI molar ratios were slightly lower as the disease state of NIDDM counterbalanced obesity.