Nutritional Supplementation and Insulin Sensitivity

Summary

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a progressive disease and early intervention and prevention strategies are therefore very important. An important early hallmark in the development of T2DM is insulin resistance. Since the majority of postprandial glucose disposal occurs in skeletal muscle, improving muscle insulin sensitivity will thus have a major impact on disease prevention. Abdominally obese men and women have an increased risk to develop T2DM, and are also characterized by an impaired vascular function. This may hamper proper delivery of insulin, glucose and oxygen to muscles, thereby contributing to - and possibly causing - muscle insulin resistance. Earlier it has been shown that supplementation with L- arginine improves vascular function by improving nitric oxide (NO) bioavailability. These NO- mediated beneficial effects on vascular function may improve delivery of insulin, glucose and oxygen to the muscle tissue, thereby improving muscle insulin sensitivity and mitochondrial function. However, the doses needed of this amino acid cannot be provided by regular diets or supplements, also due to the bitter taste of L-arginine. Alternatively, smaller amounts of L- arginine with a specific combination of other nutritional components (i.e. nitrate and nitrite), which are already part of the regular diet and support alternative pathways to improve NO- mediated vascular function, may also induce beneficial effects. The investigators now hypothesize that in abdominally obese adults with impaired fasting glucose concentrations L-arginine combined with nitrate/nitrite increases muscle insulin sensitivity.

Conditions

• Nitric Oxide
• Insulin Sensitivity
• Vascular Function
• L-arginine
• Nitrate / Nitrite

Interventions

DIETARY_SUPPLEMENT

L-arginine + Nitrate / Nitrite

Longer-term supplementation (8 weeks)

DIETARY_SUPPLEMENT

Placebo

Longer-term supplementation (8 weeks)

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Nutricia Research

  collaborator INDUSTRY

• Maastricht University Medical Center

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Peter J Joris, PhD · Maastricht University Medical Center

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

TRIPLE

Model

CROSSOVER

Eligibility

Min Age

50 Years

Max Age

70 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2020-09-01

Primary Completion

2020-10-01

Completion

2020-10-01

Countries

• Netherlands

Study Locations