Products of therapeutic insulins in the blood of insulin-dependent (type I) diabetic patients.

The tendency of insulin in high concentrations to self-associate and the widespread presence of insulin-degrading enzymes suggest that fragments and/or aggregates of insulin may circulate in normal and insulin-dependent diabetic (IDDM) individuals. To examine this possibility, we have analyzed, by sensitive physicochemical methods, immunoreactive insulin (IRI) taken from the blood of 9 healthy volunteers and 12 insulin-dependent diabetic patients. IRI from the blood of the normal volunteers was composed of 6000 (91.0 +/- 1.4%) and 9000 (9.0 +/- 1.4%) molecular weight (mol wt) material. By 10% polyacrylamide disc gel electrophoresis (PAGE) and reverse-phase, high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), the 6000 mol wt material was indistinguishable from human insulin standards and insulin fragments were not found. C-peptide reactivity in the 9000 mol wt material confirmed the expected presence of proinsulin and intermediates of proinsulin conversion. IRI harvested from the blood of 12 C-peptide-negative IDDMs, using a variety of insulin preparations, also separated into 6000 (80.5 +/- 3.9%) and 9000-12,000 (19.5 +/- 3.9%) mol wt material. By HPLC, 6000 mol wt IRI was either pork insulin (in volunteers using pure pork insulin) or a mixture of beef (approximately 90%), pork (approximately 10%) and deamidated beef (trace) insulin in those using a beef-pork mixture. However, the 9000-12,000 mol wt material had characteristics entirely distinct from proinsulin of either human or animal origin: C-peptide reactivity was undetectable using any of three sensitive radioimmunoassay systems, on PAGE it migrated more rapidly than proinsulin-like material, and in contrast to proinsulin, it was unaffected by proteolytic degradation.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)