Assessment of tissue sensitivity to insulin in uraemic patients on long-term haemodialysis therapy.

Glucose intolerance is a common concomitant of untreated chronic renal failure, but the effect of long-term treatment on the insulin resistance believed to be behind it is as yet not clarified. Peripheral tissue sensitivity to insulin was therefore examined in 7 dialyzed uraemic patients, 8 undialyzed uraemic and 8 matched healthy subjects using the hyperinsulinaemic euglycaemic clamp technique. The dialyzed subjects had been on maintenance haemodialysis for a mean of 4 yr (range, 3-131 months) and were studied both before and after a single random dialysis. The clamping was performed during 150 min using a glucose controlled insulin infusion system (Biostator). Insulin was infused at a rate of 2.0 mU/kg/min. Tissue sensitivity to insulin was expressed as glucose uptake (M) at steady state (90-150 min) over steady state serum insulin concentration (I). While M was significantly greater in healthy subjects (12.52 +/- 1.02 mg/kg/min, mean +/- 1 SEM) than in dialyzed uraemics (9.59 +/- 0.78 mg/kg/min and 9.36 +/- 0.70 mg/kg/min, both p less than 0.05), M/I was similar in chronically dialyzed patients (before and after dialysis: 0.098 +/- 0.017 mg/kg/min per microU/ml vs 0.104 +/- 0.020 mg/kg/min per microU/ml) and in controls (0.111 +/- 0.015 mg/kg/min per microU/ml; p greater than 0.20). In contrast M/I ratio of uraemic subjects who had never been dialyzed (0.062 +/- mg/kg/min per microU/ml) was significantly reduced (both p less than 0.01).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)