Special areas in the pancreas gland, the islets of Langerhans, produce a hormone called insulin. This hormone is a protein of small size. Insulin stimulates muscle cells and other body cells to take up glucose from the blood and convert the glucose to glycogen, a kind of starch, and then store the glycogen. By need the body cells convert the glycogen to glucose and use it as fuel. In this way insulin keeps the glucose level in the blood at a normal size.
By diabetes type I the cells producing insulin are destroyed. Then less glucose is taken up from the blood into the body cells and utilized there, and glucose accumulates in the blood.
THE CAUSES AND MECHANISMS OF DIABETES TYPE I
The cause of the disease is not well known. An auto-immune response attacking the insulin producing cells in the langerhansian islets may be a cause. Virus infection may be another cause. The disease also is to some extend inherited.
When the glucose uptake into the body cells is reduced, but glucose instead accumulates in the blood, the following physiological effects occur:
-The body cells do not get enough fuel for the work they shall do.
-The molecular...