Protein Consumption and Diabetes Mellitus: An Overview

Abstract

Two developments have stimulated recent interest in protein metabolism in human diabetes mellitus. The first is the accumulation of clinical evidence that dietary protein restriction can delay the progression of chronic renal failure, an important complication of diabetes. The second—and the stimulus for the four papers published in this supplement to The Journal of Nutrition—is our increasingly sophisticated, but incomplete understanding of the abnormalities of amino acid metabolism that occur in diabetes mellitus.