Restriction of essential amino acids dictates the systemic metabolic response to dietary protein dilution.
Nature Communications.
In this study, we also conducted glucose tolerance tests to further examine diet effects on whole-body metabolism. The blood glucose excursion (Fig. 2h) and related area under the curve (Supplementary Fig. 2D) was directly related to EAA supply, with lower glucose levels found with EAA restriction. Similar results were seen for that of insulin (Fig. 2i and Supplementary Fig. 2E).
From fasting glucose (Supplementary Fig. 2F) and insulin (Supplementary Fig. 2G) values, we could calculate various indices of glucose metabolic control such as the ISI(f) (Fig. 2j) and HOMA-IR (Supplementary Fig. 2H). In addition, we calculated the product of the glucose and insulin AUCs (Supplementary Fig. 2I).
Importantly, there were very close correlations between the indices determined from fasting glucose and insulin compared with those determined from the glucose tolerance tests (Supplementary Fig. 2J–L).
All of these indices highlighted that glucose metabolism/insulin sensitivity is heightened with dietary EAA restriction.