Insulin resistance: Definition and clinical spectrum - UpToDate

Insulin resistance can be broadly defined as a subnormal biological response to normal insulin concentrations. By this definition, it may pertain to many biological actions of insulin in many tissues of the body. Typically, however, in clinical practice, insulin resistance refers to a state in which a given concentration of insulin is associated with a subnormal glucose response [1]. The term first came into use several years after the introduction of insulin therapy in 1922 to describe occasional patients with diabetes who required increasingly large doses of insulin to control hyperglycemia. Most of these patients developed insulin resistance secondary to antibodies directed against the therapeutic insulin, which at that time was both impure and derived from nonhuman species [2]. Anti-insulin antibodies in titers sufficient to impair insulin action are rare in patients treated with recombinant human insulin, and the broad spectrum of clinical disorders in which insulin resistance pla

Insulin resistance can be broadly defined as a subnormal biological response to normal insulin concentrations. By this definition, it may pertain to many biological actions of insulin in many tissues of the body. Typically, however, in clinical practice, insulin resistance refers to a state in which a given concentration of insulin is associated with a subnormal glucose response [1]. The term first came into use several years after the introduction of insulin therapy in 1922 to describe occasional patients with diabetes who required increasingly large doses of insulin to control hyperglycemia.