Jeganathan S, Abdullahi A, Zargar S, Maeda N, Riddell MC, Adegoke OA. Amino acid-induced impairment of insulin sensitivity in healthy and obese rats is reversible. Physiol Rep. 2014 Jul 4;2(7). pii: e12067. doi: 10.14814/phy2.12067.

High protein diets are used as non-pharmacological interventions in the management of obesity and associated comorbidities. Also, such diets are beneficial for older adults to prevent/limit sarcopenia, the loss of muscle mass and function associated with ageing. However, other studies imply that high protein diets and the amino acids they supply may induce insulin resistance. In this work, we demonstrated that whereas amino acids appear to induce whole-body and skeletal muscle  insulin resistance in healthy and obese animals, this modification is reversible and therefore is non-pathogenic. The results of our studies show that use of high protein diet is unlikely to lead to a permanent impairment of insulin action in skeletal muscle.

Click here to view a PDF document of this article.