ABSTRACT
An understanding of the symptoms and biochemical results in Clinical Case 2.1 requires discussion of the homoeostatic mechanisms regulating blood glucose concentration, that, at any instant, is determined by the amounts entering and leaving. Glucose concentration is increased by the intake of food and by glucose production in the liver and
decreased by the uptake of glucose into cells (including those of the liver). The liver is, thus, the most important organ buffering changes in blood glucose concentration. Sitting at the head of the hepatic portal vein (Box 2.2), it directly receives digested nutrients and the two major hormones of the endocrine pancreas, insulin that decreases blood glucose concentration and glucagon that increases it.
