Diabetics: is it time to bin the insulin?

“”Whereas insulin clears surplus glucose from the blood after meals, squirrelling it away in the liver, muscles and elsewhere, glucagon does the opposite when we are hungry, ordering the liver to release stores of glucose “fuel” into the blood or to make more if none is available.

To investigate glucagon’s role, Roger Unger at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and colleagues engineered mice to lack glucagon receptors so they couldn’t respond to the hormone. Surprisingly, the mice had normal levels of blood glucose. Then, when the team used a toxin to destroy the pancreatic beta cells that make insulin, the mice remained diabetes-free.

The implication for humans is that [without glucagon] you could drink 10 bottles of sugary drinks and your blood sugar would remain the same, with or without insulin,” he says. “This was a huge surprise.”

Diabetics: is it time to bin the insulin? – health – 24 February 2011 – New Scientist