Abstract
One of us (Somogyi) 1 has shown that in diabetic patients the continued overdosage of insulin, i. e., the administration of quantities sufficient to cause hypoglycemias, gradually diminishes the carbohydrate tolerance of the patient and aggravates the diabetic condition. In this paper we call attention to the fact that insulin when administered to nondiabetic individuals, exerts a similar effect.
This observation was made on nondiabetic tuberculous patients, who were treated with insulin with the purpose of inducing an increase in their body weight. The procedure in this work differed from others described in the literature in 2 respects. In the first place, the amount of insulin used was very small. In 2 cases only 10 units were given daily, injected in 5-unit doses before the noon and evening meals, while the remaining patients received at the beginning 10, and subsequently 20 units daily, always administered in 2 equal doses. In the second place, the duration of the treatment in this experiment was much longer than in others reported; the observations extended in 5 cases over a period of 6 months, and in one case over 12 months.
In each case glucose tolerance test was performed a short time before the beginning of the treatment and a second test after insulin injections had been continued for approximately 6 months; in one case a third test was carried out after 12 months of uninterrupted treatment. In the tolerance tests uniformly 100 gm. of glucose was given orally and the blood sugar was determined at hourly intervals by the Shaffer-Hartmann method, using copper reagent No. 50 of Shaffer and Somogyi. 2 The blood samples were deproteinized with Somogyi's zinc method 3 which removes nonfermentable reducing substances so that the analysis furnishes true sugar values (which are about 20 mg. % lower than the apparent sugar values obtained with the Folin-Wu method).
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.