Res Function and Glucose Homeostasis

Abstract

As well known to members of the RE Societies, the name for the collection of wandering and sessile mononuclear phagocytic cells which we so dearly love to study was coined by the German pathologist Ludwig Aschoff as the “reticuloendothelial system”. Less well known, however, is that Aschoff in his original studies was so impressed by the metabolic functions of the phagocytic cells that he suggested an alternate term for the phagocyte collection — namely, the “histiocytic metabolic apparatus) (1). The studies to be presented herein deal with a novel, metabolic role for the macrophage apparatus — namely, a proposed regulatory function in glucose homeostasis which pivots around RES influences on insulin dynamics and the resultant functional insulinemic state.