Regulation of Glucose Uptake by Muscle

Publisher Summary It is now recognized that a number of factors can influence the uptake of glucose by muscle. Some are of physiological importance and these include hormones, notably insulin, growth hormone, corticosteroids, and adrenaline and possibly thyroxine and glucagon, and nonhormonal factors such as the availability of oxygen, the contractile activity of the tissue, the concentration of glucose in extracellular water, arid the availability for respiration of other substrates, such as ketone bodies and fatty acids. Other factors that influence glucose uptake arc of interest because of their hypoglycemic effects in diabetic patients and animals, notably salicylate and 2 ,4-dinitrophenol. The uptake of glucose by muscle is a complex process, which is thought to involve, in sequence, passage of the sugar from capillaries to the muscle cell membrane, transfer across the cell membrane, and metabolism within the cell by multienzyme systems with their various cofactors.