B-cell responses to intravenous glucose and glucagon in non-diabetic twins of patients with Type 1 (insulin-dependent) diabetes mellitus

Summary

The B-cells of patients with recently diagnosed Type 1 (insulin-dependent) diabetes may have no response to glucose when the response to glucagon is present but attenuated. This observation suggests that the recognition of glucose is more severely affected than that for non-glucose stimulants. To determine whether a similar selective decrease in glucose response was present before the onset of diabetes we studied two groups of non-diabetic identical twins of patients with recently diagnosed Type 1 diabetes: one group with complement-fixing islet cell antibodies who were at high risk of developing diabetes (four of the five have already developed diabetes) and a group without such antibodies at low risk of developing diabetes. In addition, a group of patients with chronic pancreatitis were studied to control for non-specific damage to the B-cell. Responses to i. v. glucose and i.v. glucagon were compared. Patients with chronic pancreatitis has similar responses to both glucose and glucagon and the responses did not differ from control subjects. The B-cells of the immune positive group showed evidence of pathology because the insulin and C-peptide responses to both stimuli were reduced when compared to either their control subjects or the immune negative twin group. However, the B-cell response to both glucose and glucagon in the immune positive twins was similar. Because the B-cell response to glucose was not less than that to glucagon, a selective destruction of the glucose recognition system cannot be a characteristic of all twins throughout the period before they develop Type 1 diabetes.