Abstract

The gastric secretory responses to various doses of histamine and insulin have been studied in 11 control and 12 duodenal ulcer subjects belonging to the Ganges delta of India where the incidence of duodenal ulcer disease is known to be high. A dose of 0·04 mg/kg body weight of histamine acid phosphate was sufficient to produce peak gastric acid output both in the control and duodenal ulcer subjects. However, a dose as low as 0·025 U insulin/kg body weight was enough to produce peak rates of gastric acid output in duodenal ulcer subjects, whereas in the controls a minimum dose of 0·05 U insulin/kg body weight was sufficient. A greater proportion of the duodenal ulcer patients also showed a peak acid secretory response in the first hour after administration of insulin. Furthermore, increasing doses of insulin in this population did not produce lower levels of blood glucose but did produce increasingly high acid output as subjects do in the West. K values derived from the intravenous glucose tolerance test showed that 75% of duodenal ulcer patients and 54% of the controls had variable degrees of intolerance to glucose. Gastric acid secretion in response to a bolus of 50 ml 50% intravenous glucose was also studied in a separate group of 16 duodenal ulcer and 13 control subjects. A sharp rise in the volume, titratable acidity, and total acid output was observed in the early part of the fourth hour in the control and duodenal ulcer subjects. In a separate group of controls a bolus of intravenous hypertonic saline produced no such increase in gastric acid secretion.