Original Articles| August 01 1991
Insulin Pulses Less Effective Than Continuous Insulin in Inhibiting PEPCK mRNA Levels Stimulated by cAMP and Dexamethasone in Perifused Hepatoma Cells
H Courtenay Harrison, Jr;
H Courtenay Harrison, Jr
Departments of Medicine and Physiology and Biophysics, University of Washington
Charles J Goodner;
Charles J Goodner
Marry Ann Berrie
Address correspondence and reprint requests to Charles J. Goodner, MD, Professor of Medicine, Division of Endocrinology, ZA-24, Harborview Medical Center, 325 Ninth Avenue, Seattle WA 98104.
Diabetes 1991;40(8):990–997
https://doi.org/10.2337/diab.40.8.990
H Courtenay Harrison, Charles J Goodner, Marry Ann Berrie; Insulin Pulses Less Effective Than Continuous Insulin in Inhibiting PEPCK mRNA Levels Stimulated by cAMP and Dexamethasone in Perifused Hepatoma Cells. Diabetes 1 August 1991; 40 (8): 990–997. https://doi.org/10.2337/diab.40.8.990
Hepatic glucose production is stimulated in vitro twice as effectively by pulsatile as by continuous glucagon, given equivalent time-averaged doses. Efficacy studies of pulsatile insulin have yielded conflicting results. In the rat hepatoma cell line H-4-II-E-C3, insulin rapidly (t½ 15 min) inhibits transcription of the gene and lowers mRNA levels for the gluconeogenic enzyme. PEPCK via a receptor-mediated process. We attached H-4-II-E-C3 cells to Cytodex-3 μcarriers and used a perifusion column system to test whether pulsatile insulin is more or less effective than equivalent time-averaged doses of continuous insulin. PEPCK transcription was induced by inclusion of cAMP analogue 8-(4-chlorophenyl-thio)-cAMP (0.1 mM) and dexamethasone (0.5 μM) in the perifusion medium. Three columns were exposed either to continuous, pulsatile, or no insulin. After 3 h, total nucleic acid was extracted, and mRNAPEPCK was measured with a sensitive-solution hybridization assay. Continuous insulin inhibited PEPCK expression in a dose-dependent fashion with EC50 1 × 10−11 M. Equivalent time-averaged amounts of insulin delivered as pulses achieved significant inhibition but less effectively than continuous insulin. The apparent EC50 for pulsatile insulin increased from 2 × 10−11 M to 5 × 10−11 M as the oscillatory period was raised from 5 to 20 min, respectively. These observations suggest that insulin-mediated inhibition of PEPCK gene transcription is diminished by a pulsatile mode of administration in marked contrast to the pulse enhancement demonstrated for glucagon-mediated hepatic glucose production.