Pulsatile insulin Pulsatile insulin Pulsatile intravenous insulin therapy, sometimes called metabolic activation therapy, or cellular activation therapy describes in a literal sense the intravenous injection of insulin in pulses versus continuous infusions. Injection of insulin in pulses mimics the physiological secretions of insulin by the pancreas into the portal vein which then drains into the liver. In healthy, non-diabetic individuals, pancreatic secretions of insulin correspond to the intake of food. The pancreas will secrete variable amounts of insulin based upon the amount of food consumed (basically speaking, the more food that is consumed, the more insulin the pancreas will secrete) among other
Insulin suggests that it has been conserved across much of animal evolutionary history. The C-peptide of proinsulin (discussed later), however, differs much more among species; it is also a hormone, but a secondary one. The primary structure of bovine insulin was first determined by Frederick Sanger in 1951. After that, this polypeptide was synthesized independently by several groups. The 3-dimensional structure of insulin was determined by X-ray crystallography in Dorothy Hodgkin's laboratory in 1969 (PDB file 1ins). Insulin is produced and stored in the body as a hexamer (a unit of six insulin molecules), while the active form is the monomer.