Insulin resistance can be broadly defined as a subnormal
biological response to normal insulin concentrations. By this
definition, it may pertain to many biological actions of insulin
in many tissues of the body. Typically, however, in clinical
practice, insulin resistance refers to a state in which a given
concentration of insulin is associated with a subnormal glucose
response . The term first came into use several years after the
introduction of insulin therapy in 1922 to describe occasional
diabetic patients who required increasingly large doses of
insulin to control hyperglycemia. Most of these patients
developed insulin resistance secondary to antibodies directed
against the therapeutic insulin, which at that time was both
impure and derived from non-human species . Antiinsulin
antibodies are rare in patients treated with recombinant human
insulin, and the spectrum of clinical disorders in which insulin
resistance plays a major role has changed markedly. Insulin
resistance, rather than being a rare comp