Bile lipid composition and bile acid pool size in diabetes.

Since the prevalence of gallstones is higher in diabetics than in controls and since cholelithiasis is often associated with supersaturated bile, we measured bile lipid composition and bile acid pool size in 8 patients with juvenile diabetes, 16 with maturity-onset diabetes, and 10 control subjects. Bile lipid composition was expressed as "saturation index." In the maturity-onset diabetics the saturation index (1.60 +/- 0.45 SDM) was significantly higher (P less than 0.005) than that in the controls (0.82 +/- 0.20) and in patients with juvenile diabetes (0.75 +/- 0.24). The absolute values for biliary bile acid concentration were significantly lower (P less than 0.01) in the maturity-onset diabetics than in the other two groups. There were no differences in either the proportion of the individual biliary bile acids or the size of the bile acid pool between the three groups. The results suggest that the incidence of cholelithiasis in diabetes is associated with the secretion of a supersaturated bile only in the maturity-onset subgroup.