cit-title-group
Abstract
has been studied exten sively during the last 30 years not only be cause of its importance to the regulation of energy balance in the animal but also be cause of its importance in the pathophysiology of diabetes mellitus (1-4). The BHE strain of rat has some of the traits of the human with late-onset diabetes (see réf. for review). It develops spontane 5 ous glycemia and lipemia around 300 d of age (middle age for the rat) and sometimes shows evidence of renal and vascular lesions that may lead to premature death. Early in the life of this rat, it has normal glucose and lipid levels, yet it may be hyperinsulinemic, hyperlipogenic and hypergluconeogenic as well (5, 6). It also has larger-than-normal hepatic glycogen stores (6). It has been reported that isolated hepatocytes from starved BHE rats synthesize significantly é1986 American Institute of Nutrition. Received for publication: 7 June 1985. Accepted for publication: 28 February 1986. 'Supported by USDA Cooperative Agreement |58-3244-2-361, NIH Grant AM21667and Georgia Agricultural Experiment Station project no. H779. *Present address: University of Nebraska College of Medicine, Omaha, NE. 3To whom correspondence should be addressed. more glucose from a variety of substrates than cells