Determination of physiological parameters for endogenous glucose production in individuals using diurnal data.

Background: Triple tracer meal experiments used to investigate organ glucose-insulin dynamics, such as endogenous glucose production (EGP) of the liver are labor intensive and expensive. A procedure was developed to obtain individual liver related parameters to describe EGP dynamics without the need for tracers.

Results: The development used an existing formula describing the EGP dynamics comprising 4 parameters defined from glucose, insulin and C-peptide dynamics arising from triple meal studies. The method employs a set of partial differential equations in order to estimate the parameters for EGP dynamics. Tracer-derived and simulated data sets were used to develop and test the procedure. The predicted EGP dynamics showed an overall mean R ² of 0.91.

Conclusions: In summary, a method was developed for predicting the hepatic EGP dynamics for healthy, pre-diabetic, and type 2 diabetic individuals without applying tracer experiments.