The Pancreas Flashcards
What is The Pancreas?
- Elongated gland found behind the stomach
What is the exocrine function of the pancreas?
central pancreatic duct delivers secretions to the duodenum
What is the endocrine function of the pancreas?
Pancreatic islet cells secrete hormones
- Alpha cells secrete glucagon
- Beta cells secrete insulin
What is Insulin?
- Polypeptide hormone produced by the beta cells of the pancreas
- Increased during absorptive state and decreased during post-absorptive state
- Main effects are on muscle cells (skeletal and cardiac), adipocytes and hepatocytes
What happens to muscle cells when plasma insulin increases?
- increase glucose uptake and utilization
- ## net glycogen synthesis
What happens to Adipocytes when plasma insulin increases?
What happens to liver cells when plasma insulin increases?
What happens to muscle cells when plasma insulin decreases?
What happens to adipocytes when plasma insulin decreases?
What happens to liver cells when plasma insulin decreases?
The brain has a glucose transporter that is insulin-independent, ensuring it always has access to glucose
vesicles need insulin for glucose tranpsorters to function and uprake glucose into the cell
What insulin-independent mechanism has the same effect on GLUT4 transporters?
excersize
What is Glucagon?
- Polypeptide hormone produced by the alpha cells of the pancreas
- Primarily controlled by negative feedback mechanism but also by neural and hormonal inputs to the islets (same as insulin)
Diabetes Mellitus
What is Type 1 Diabetes?
- Autoimmune syndrome where the beta cells are attacked by the immune system
- Individuals with T1D require insulin injections to maintain glucose homeostasis
Diabetes Mellitus
What is Type 2 Diabetes?
Target cells of insulin become
hyporesponsive (or insulin resistant)
chronic stress leads to chronically high levels of cortisol in the plasma. What effect might this have on symptoms of diabetes
higher glucose blood concentrations
someone with diabetes would unable to regulate
