Figure - PMC

Skip to main content

An official website of the United States government

Here's how you know

Here's how you know

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

View full-text article in PMC

. 2020 Aug 21;18:224. doi: 10.1186/s12916-020-01688-6

Search in PMC
Search in PubMed
View in NLM Catalog
Add to search

© The Author(s) 2020

Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

PMC Copyright notice

Fig. 4 — Hyperinsulinemia, insulin resistance, and cardiovascular disease. High insulin concentrations in the blood may occur due to genetic predisposition, overnutrition, or high-dose insulin treatment of type 2 diabetes. Hyperinsulinemia induces “insulin resistance” as a defense response to maintain glucose homeostasis. Conversely, insulin resistance may be directly induced such as by growth hormone or pro-inflammatory cytokines. Hyperinsulinemia and insulin resistance enhance the risk of cardiovascular disease, by inducing endothelial dysfunction, suppression of endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS), and activation and promotion of calcium ion influx into smooth muscle cells, resulting in increased vascular tone, enhanced reabsorption of sodium ions in renal tubules, adhesion of macrophages to the vessel wall, and development of arterial lesions with increased lipoprotein lipase activity and cardiovascular disease