Introduction Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a syndrome of disturbed energy metabolism involving carbohydrate, protein, and fat brought about by absolute or relative deficiency of insulin secretion, in the context of sensitivity or resistance to insulin actions at various tissue sites.…
Introduction Diabetes is a heterogeneous disorder with many different possible causes, both genetic and acquired. Risk for the most common causes, type 1 and type 2 diabetes, depends on many different gene loci with intermediate or low effects and are…
Introduction One of the most important metabolic events to mark the transition from fetal to neonatal life is the adaptation from an environment that has a readily available and continuous source of glucose—transplacental passage of maternal blood—to an environment in…
Historical background Endocrinology is a discipline of science that seeks to understand how chemical signals secreted by cells regulate the function of distant (endocrine) or local (paracrine) tissues, or even their own function (autocrine), to integrate vital processes of life,…
Glucose has a central role in fuel economy and is a source of energy storage in the form of glycogen, fat, and protein (see Chapter 105 ). As an immediate source of energy, glucose provides 38 mol of adenosine triphosphate (ATP)…
Introduction and Background In the fully developed organism, growth hormone (GH), a 22-kDa molecule of 191 amino acids, is synthesized by acidophil cells in the anterior pituitary gland under the direction of hypothalamic GH-releasing hormone, which binds to its G…