Insulin secretion and clearance. Comparison after oral and intravenous glucose.

Insulin secretion and clearance in response to the administration of oral and intravenous glucose was investigated in nine normal men. C-peptide metabolic kinetics were calculated by analysis of individual C-peptide decay curves after the bolus injection of biosynthetic human C-peptide. Glucose was administered to the subjects on three occasions: as a 75-g oral dose, a 75-g i.v. infusion, and an intravenous glucose infusion at a variable rate adjusted to mimic the peripheral glucose levels obtained after the oral glucose load (matching experiment). Glucose, insulin, and C-peptide concentrations were measured for the subsequent 5 h. The glucose level after the oral glucose load (115.9 +/- 2.6 mg/dl, mean +/- SE) closely approximated that after the matching experiment (120.5 +/- 2.5 mg/dl) but was significantly lower than after 75 g i.v. glucose (127.7 +/- 3.4 mg/dl, P less than .05). Analysis of the areas under the peripheral concentration curves (60-360 min) showed that the responses of both insulin (52.7 +/- 5.6 and 46.5 +/- 4.5 pmol.ml-1.300 min-1) and C-peptide (252.7 +/- 27.5 and 267.0 +/- 21.6 pmol.ml-1.300 min-1) were not significantly different after the oral and 75-g i.v. glucose studies, respectively, whereas in the matching experiment, both the insulin (26.1 +/- 3.9 pmol.ml-1.300 min-1) and C-peptide (178.0 +/- 18.9 pmol.ml-1.300 min-1) responses were lower (P less than .05) than in the other two studies. Insulin secretory rates were derived from peripheral C-peptide concentrations with an open two-compartment model and individually derived model parameters. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)