Analysis of glucose homeostasis dynamics in healthy and type-I diabetes mellitus in-silico subjects
   

Bloch Naamah1*, Sherman Dana1*, Setty Yaki1* and David Harel1

1 Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel.
*equal contribution

 

Glucose homeostasis, the process by which the human body maintains ideal blood glucose concentrations, is essential for providing continuous energy supply to allow proper function of the human body. Abnormal glucose homeostasis, as in the case of diabetes mellitus, may cause long-term health problems that may gradually cause severe damage to essential organs. Here, we integrated the key entities that participate in the glucose regulation into a dynamic computer simulation of glucose homeostasis. We used the simulation to analyze glucose homeostasis dynamics under myriad nutrition and treatment conditions in healthy and type-I diabetic in-silico subjects. We found that the emergent dynamics of the simulation qualitatively concur with published data of glucose homeostasis in healthy and diabetic human subjects. We then analyzed glucose homeostasis under starvation conditions, characterized three behavioral classes for steady homeostasis and revealed distinct dynamics under extreme conditions. Specifically, we found that (1) excessive external glucose uptake and controlled insulin injection stabilize the blood glucose concentrations and (2) abundant glucose uptake combined with excessive insulin injection develop  bi-phasic dynamics in which glucose concentrations recover from low blood glucose concentrations. The approach presented here can be generalized and applied to the study of the dynamics of other diseases and biological systems.

 

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