Glucagon and the Regulation of Blood Sugar

Abstract

Those interested in the riddle of diabetes have always been intrigued by the role of the hormonal "antagonists" to insulin in the causation and maintenance of the diabetic state. An early candidate for the office of "diabetogenic factor" was, of course, epinephrine (when it was still called adrenalin). However, no support could be found for its role in the nontransient chronic hyperglycemia of diabetes, even though insulin and epinephrine might appear to "oppose" each other in an acute pharmacologic experiment. Far more serious were the claims of some of the pituitary hormones and of the glucocorticoids of the adrenal glands. . . .