<p>This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.</p> <p>Two classes of inositol phosphoglycans have been implicated as
second messengers of insulin, one that activates pyruvate dehydrogenase
and contains D-chiroinositol, and one that inhibits cyclic
AMP–dependent protein kinase and contains myoinositol. We examined
the effects of a 3-day fast on muscle contents of inositols
in healthy humans. An oral glucose tolerance test was performed
and a biopsy was obtained from the quadriceps femoris muscle
after an overnight fast and after a 72-hour fast. The 72-hour fast
significantly increased plasma glucose (1.5- to 2-fold) and insulin
(2- to 4-fold) after glucose ingestion versus the values after the
overnight fast, indicating the manifestation of peripheral insulin
resistance. The 72-hour fast resulted in an ∼20% decrease in the
muscle content of D-chiroinositol (<italic>P</italic> &lt; 0.02), but no change in the
myoinositol content. These data demonstrate that fasting specifically
decreases the muscle content of D-chiroinositol in human muscle
and this may contribute to the finding that insulin-mediated activation
of pyruvate dehydrogenase is attenuated after short-term
starvation.</p>
[]
Int J Exp Diabetes Res. 2002; 3(3):163-169