Abstract
Recently Schlichtkrull and his coworkers produced monocomponent insulin (MC insulin) as a less antigenic insulin preparation. We used MC insulin for the treatment of diabetics requiring insulin therapy and compared it with conventional insulin on antigenicity. Serum antibody levels tended to decrease and total serum insulin levels also decreased significantly in the 13 patients who were converted to MC insulin therapy from conventional insulin. That is to say, the total serum insulin level as a percentage to the level before conversion to MC insulin was 42±8.92%(n=13) at the 6th month and 36.7±10.55% at the 12th month after conversion. After conversion to conventional insulin from MC, serum insulin levels in these patients inclined to increase again.
We found insulin antibody produced by MC insulin in 3 out of 6 patients who had had no insulin antibodies before MC insulin treatment. One of the 3 had been treated with conventional insulin for 1 year several years ago, and the other 2 had never been treated with insulin. In one of these 2 cases treated with MC insulin, the insulin antibody level increased continuously, and in the other it decreased again to a trace level in spite of the continuous administration of MC insulin.
We consider that MC insulin is less antigenic than conventional insulin.
