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. |
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. Download Source Code (zip file) Contact us: yaki.setty@gmail.com |