Insullin and Atherosclerosis

The purpose of this research is to examine insulin as a risk factor for atherosclerosis. The plan of the research will be to set forth the connection that has been identified between insufficient insulin usage by the body system and cardiovascular disease, and then to discuss ways in which insulin has been identified in various research studies as a risk factor for atherosclerosis in particular. Unfortunately, despite the relative familiarity of insulin to professional clinical research, its function and role in the problems associated with atherosclerosis is imperfectly understood.

To say that insulin is a risk factor for atherosclerosis is somewhat misleading for the reason that it is a risk factor by negative inference. That is, atherosclerosis appears to be a consequence of what insulin does not do--or what it does badly--in its arterial functions. It may be useful to note that the dictionary identifies atherosclerosis as a subset of arteriosclerosis. It is the name given to the formation of plaque by fatty substances on the interior walls of arteries, hence, to the narrowing of the diameter of blood vessels. Insulin resistance, or insulin insensitivity, is the name given to the body's inefficient use of insulin to foster glucose metabolism, i.e., to flush away excess waste glucose. Insulin resistance is also sometimes called high blood sugar, and some studies describe insulin resistance in terms of the burden placed on the hyperglycemic system (13). (Indeed, the multipl

o atherosclerosis, were found to vary with sex, presence of diabetes, and race. For example, one part of the study found a connection between coronary heart disease and so-called fasting insulin (insulin that works on an empty stomach) for women without diabetes but not for men without diabetes (4). Another part of the ARIC study focused on the mechanism of hemoglobin, a blood protein, in nondiabetics. It was found that patterns of elevated levels of sugar in hemoglobin (glycosylated hemoglobin), even when processed by more or less normal insulin functioning (homeostatic glycemic control), were consistent with (though they did not exactly prove) observed narrowing and hardening of the lining of the carotid (neck) arteries of study subjects--in short with atherosclerosis symptoms (12). To put it another way, even when insulin mechanisms operate within normal limits, what could be called the "shadow" of insulin resistance, i.e., the very fact of requiring the body to dispose of high saturations of glucose, is an index of symptoms of atherosclerosis. A study similar to ARIC, the Insulin Resistance Atherosclerosis Study, took place at Wake Forest University in the 1990s. IRAS appears to have focused on symptomatic details rather tha

Category: Medical - I