The kinetics of body glucose turnover have been investigated using uniformly labeled glucose in nondiabetic human subjects who have received oral phenethylbiguanide (DBI).
It is shown that phenethylbiguanide significantly accelerates the turnover of glucose in the nondiabetic subject. It is postulated that this increase in turnover (increased supply as well as increased uptake) probably accounts for the lack of hypoglycemic action of this drug in the nondiabetic human.
In several subjects a multi-exponential glucose specific activity time curve was observed. We suggest in the light of the behavior of this curve following insulin administration that the deviation from the single exponential curve is the result of extensive recycling of the C-14 label (of glucose) into the glucose pool.
