Blood glucose response to stress hormone exposure in healthy man and insulin dependent diabetic patients: prediction by computer modeling

To establish a qualitative and quantitative model of blood glucose response to stress hormone exposure, healthy subjects (HS) on and off somatostatin (250 mu gf/h) and insulin-dependent diabetic patients were infused with either epinephrine, glucagon, cortisol, growth hormone, or a cocktail of these hormones, raising plasma stress hormones to values seen in severe diabetic ketoacidosis. The developed input/output model consists of two submodels interconnected in series plus two additional submodels for correction of gains describing both sensitivity of tissue response and utilization as well as provision of glucose. It was shown and confirmed experimentally that blood glucose response to stress hormones was essentially nonlinear. Furthermore, the mathematical models for healthy subjects and for insulin-dependent diabetic patients proved to be of the same structure, differing only in the values of some typical parameters.