Hyperkalemia is a medical emergency that can induce deadly cardiac arrhythmias. Treatment of hyperkalemia can be thought of in three distinct steps. First, antagonize the effects of hyperkalemia at the cellular level (membrane stabilization) by administering calcium gluconate; secondly, decrease serum potassium by promoting potassium into cells through co-administration of glucose and insulin a...

In the heart, insulin controls key functions such as metabolism, muscle contraction and cell death. However, all studies have been focused on insulin action during reperfusion. Here we explore the cardioprotective action of this hormone during ischemia. Rat hearts were perfused ex vivo with an ischemia/reperfusion Langendorff model in absence or presence of insulin. Additionally, cultured rat c...

Although insulin-mediated vasodilation is impaired in insulin resistance, the mechanisms of this are unknown. We investigated factors mediating vasoactive responses to insulin in control and insulin-resistant rats. Responses to insulin in small mesenteric arteries from control and insulin-resistant rats were investigated after blocking endothelin-A receptors, cyclooxygenase, nitric oxide syntha...

1. Insulin simultaneously causes hypokalaemia and antinatriuresis, and it has been suggested that the two effects are tightly coupled. Whether these actions are preserved in patients with essential hypertension is not known. 2. Eight hypertensive patients and eight normotensive control subjects were studied before and after the ingestion of 75 g of glucose. Despite similar glycaemic profiles, t...

Conventional three-dimensional printing processes are material-dependent, and are irreversible. We present an alternative approach based on three-dimensional assembly of mass-produced two-dimensional components of digital material. This significantly enlarges the available material set, allows reversible disassembly, and imposes constraints that reduce the accumulation of local positioning erro...

The human body contains about 3,500mmol of potassium. Only about 2 per cent of this is in the extracellular fluid at any one time and the rest is intracellular. This 98 per cent is held in cells by a set of complex mechanisms and is pumped in and out of them by Na/K-ATPase pumps. Potassium has many biological functions. It is a co-factor for many enzymes and it is required for insulin secretion...