Department of Medicine, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, 60637, USA.
Sci Rep. 2017 Nov 27;7(1):16398. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-16300-w.
Pancreatic beta-cell mass is a critical determinant of the progression of diabetes. The loss of beta-cells in various types of diabetes has been documented in comparison to age, sex and body mass index (BMI) matched control subjects. However, the underlying heterogeneity of beta-cell mass in healthy individuals has not been considered. In this study, the inter-individual heterogeneity in beta-cell/islet mass was examined among 10 cases of age-matched non-diabetic male subjects in relation to BMI, pancreas weight, and the percent ratio, volume and number of islets in the whole pancreas. Beta-cell/islet mass was measured using a large-scale unbiased quantification method. In contrast to previous studies, we found no clinically relevant correlation between beta-cell/islet mass and age, BMI or pancreas weight, with large differences in beta-cell/islet mass and islet number among the individuals. Our method extracts the comprehensive information out of individual pancreas providing multifaceted parameters to study the intrinsic heterogeneity of the human pancreas.
胰岛β细胞质量是糖尿病进展的关键决定因素。与年龄、性别和体重指数（BMI）匹配的对照组相比，各种类型的糖尿病中β细胞的损失已经得到证实。然而，健康个体中β细胞质量的潜在异质性尚未得到考虑。在这项研究中，我们在 10 例年龄匹配的非糖尿病男性受试者中，检查了β细胞/胰岛质量在个体间的异质性与 BMI、胰腺重量以及整个胰腺中胰岛的比例、体积和数量之间的关系。β细胞/胰岛质量使用大规模无偏定量方法进行测量。与之前的研究不同，我们发现β细胞/胰岛质量与年龄、BMI 或胰腺重量之间没有临床相关的相关性，个体之间的β细胞/胰岛质量和胰岛数量存在很大差异。我们的方法从个体胰腺中提取全面信息，提供多方面的参数来研究人类胰腺的内在异质性。
