The metabolic logistics of stress, diabetes mellitus and works by Bernardo Alberto Houssay

The paper deals with redistribution of energetic and plastic resources in the organism during stress, acute phase response and diabetes mellitus. Assuming metabolic regulation is based upon balanced contradictory influences of diverse chemical signals (substrates, ions, autacoids, hormones, neurotransmitters, physiological autoantibodies) the peculiarities of insulin- and counter-insulin effects during acute and chronic adaptation under stress, acute phase response and diabetes mellitus have been discussed. The role of chronic stress and accompanying metabolic disorders has been accentuated as a basis for stress-associated diseases’ development. The role of outstanding Argentinean pathophysiologist Bernardo Alberto Houssay (1887-1971) is discussed. He had devoted himself to studies of pituitary bioregulators’ influence on insulin effects immediately after insulin discovery and had established in 1924 that pituitary removal is able to increase sensitivity to insulin in dogs, and developed “secondary diabetes mellitus” concept as a result of counter-insulin hormones’ excess (especially hormones of adenohypophysis and the adrenal glands (“steroid diabetes”). Bernardo Alberto Houssay was really the first to experimentally prove pituitary and adrenal bioregulators to oppose the insulin effects. Bernardo Alberto Houssay has been 46 times nominated for the Nobel prize for 17 years (1931 through 1947), and finally was awarded the Nobel prize in 1947 for achievements in Physiology and Medicine for disclosing the role of pituitary in carbohydrate metabolism (he was the first ever Nobel prize winner from Latin America). The paper discusses publications by B. A. Houssay, current development of his ideas, as well as historical and biographical information on his research and his scientific school of endocrinologists-pathophysiologists in the context of his epoch, on the background of history of Argentina [3 figs, bibliography: 34 refs].