Absence of a memory effect for the insulinotropic action of glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) in healthy volunteers

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Glucagon, published as a randomized controlled trial.

The term memory effect refers to the phenomenon that B cell stimuli retain some of their insulinotropic effects after they have been removed.

Memory effects exist for glucose and sulfonylureas.

It is not known whether there is a B-cell memory for incretin hormones such as GLP-1.

Who Took Part

PubMed indexes the participants as adults, men only.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized and placebo-controlled study.

Because people in this Glucagon study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Glucagon could be set against what happens without it.

GLP-1 was infused from (b). - 60 to 120 min, (c). - 210 to - 30 min, or (d). - 300 to - 120 min.

Glucose (glucose oxidase), insulin, C-peptide, GLP-1, and glucagon (immunoassays) were determined.

Statistical analysis was carried out by ANOVA and appropriate post hoc tests.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Analysis of Variance, Blood Glucose, C-Peptide, Fasting, Glucagon, Glucagon-Like Peptide 1 and Insulin.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and placebo-controlled study of Glucagon.

Its findings take up roughly 7 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2003 (Hormone and metabolic research = Hormon- und Stoffwechselforschung = Hormones et metabolisme), a journal based in Germany.

More context: the Glucagon compound page, all human trials.