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Chromium and Diabetes

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Synonyms

Chromium; Diabetes; Glucose tolerance factor; Trivalent chromium

Definition

Trivalent chromium plays an important role in potentiating the insulin response in cells sensitive to insulin. A deficiency in chromium could lead to an impaired response and thereby diabetes. Supplementing chromium in patients with diabetes with this deficiency could potentially improve glycemic control.

Introduction

The prevalence of diabetes mellitus worldwide was estimated to be 171,000,000 in the year 2000 and is expected to rise to 366,000,000 in the year 2030 (Wild et al. 2004). This rise is predominantly caused by the increase in patients having type 2 diabetes. Type 1 diabetes is characterized by an absolute shortage of endogenous insulin caused by an autoimmune reaction, which requires treatment with exogenous insulin to compensate for the absence of a patient’s own insulin. Type 2 diabetes is to a large extent caused by an increase in insulin resistance, in other words a relative shortage...

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References

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Correspondence to Nanne Kleefstra .

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© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Kleefstra, N. (2013). Chromium and Diabetes. In: Kretsinger, R.H., Uversky, V.N., Permyakov, E.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Metalloproteins. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-1533-6_20

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