Influence of diet composition on insulin output, carbohydrate tolerance and lipid values in primary hypertriglyceridemia (HT).

Hypertriglyceridemic patients generally show a post-challenge hyperinsulinemia. In patients where carbohydrate intolerance coexists, increasing of reactive insulin is relatively diminished and delayed. In a group of 31 hypertriglyceridemic patients these characteristics of insulin increments in peripheral blood during a 50 g OGTT were constant: neither a low-fat (carbohydrate-rich) nor a high-fat (low carbohydrate) isocaloric, weight-maintaining diet had a significant influence on this parameter when compared with a standard diet (protein content unaltered throughout all diet periods). Glucose tolerance was significantly improved after the low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet. The results were neither correlated with the type of dietary inducibility of fasting triglyceride levels in individual cases nor with the sequence of diet periods prescribed. Hyperinsulinemia in hypertriglyceridemic patients is not believed to be the direct consequence of abnormal composition of the antecedent diet.