Glycemic Effects of Beer in IDDM Patients: Studies With Constant Insulin Delivery

Abstract

There are many factors influencing the glycemic response to carbohydrate (CHO) foods in humans, with several divergent reports in the literature (1-13). Part of the variability is probably due to methodological inadequacies, such as those recently pointed out by Gannon and Nuttall (14). To control for one of the most important variables affecting postprandial glycemia in subjects with endogenous insulin secretion, i.e., the meal-induced insulin response, we investigated the glycemic properties of alcoholic beverages with and without CHO in insulin-dependent diabetic (IDDM) patients connected to a constant intravenous insulin infusion according to the method of Brodows et al. (15) and Hermansen et al. (16,17).