| Abstract: |
| Glucose, insulin, and glucagon together form a complete endocrine metabolic feedback loop. Most existing modeling work pertaining to this loop focuses mainly on the regulations between glucose and insulin. The role of glucagon in these works is summarized by hepatic glucose production (HGP) dependent solely on insulin levels. In this talk, we carefully analyze the secretion of glucagon, its role in HGP, and its interactions with insulin, and then formulate a dynamical system model to further analyze its effects in balancing blood sugar levels. The presence of glucagon allows us to examine the impacts of HGP governed by insulin and glucagon separately. This reveals insight about how a very recent concept, glucagon resistance, can affect blood glucose levels and lead to rampant glucagon production and consequently blood sugar levels. We also show that a form of insulin resistance in hepatic cells can lead to excess insulin secretion, a characteristic of type 2 diabetes mellitus. We also present some thoughts on modeling the feedback loop in a dual pump artificial pancreas. |
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