Insights About Diabetes and Hyperinsulinism Gained From the Insulin Immunoassay

Abstract

In less than a decade the supersensitive insulin immunoassay has crystallized basic aspects of sugar metabolism from a confusion of conflicting concepts into a hard core of integrated knowledge. It has provided ultimate proof, for example, that the supreme insulin-secretory stimulus is hyperglycemia and that sulfonylureas lower blood sugar only by stimulating insulin release. The isolation of the insulin precursor proinsulin is hailed as the most monumental discovery since that of insulin itself.