Influence of pregnancy on the kinetics of insulin.

The disappearance rate of intravenously injected insulin was investigated in the serum of 30 women during the third trimester of pregnancy and 6 to 8 weeks post partum, in order to determine whether pregnancy has an influence on insulin kinetics in human subjects. Both women with unimpaired glucose tolerance and those with latent diabetes were included in this study. The disappearance rate of exogenous serum insulin in pregnancy was characterized by a two-compartment model. Multivariate analyses of variance were used to determine whether the estimated parameters of this model during pregnancy differ from those obtained after the puerperium and whether the insulin kinetics are altered when carbohydrate metabolism is disturbed. The kinetics of insulin during pregnancy did not differ from those after pregnancy. Thus, hyperinsulinemia observed in pregnancy cannot be explained by a change in the insulin kinetics. It appears improbable that the insulin-degrading enzyme activities of the placenta participate in degradation of insulin circulating in the maternal blood. A connection between the decline of glucose tolerance during pregnancy and the kinetics of exogenous insulin could not be found.