[Insulin lipoatrophy and its elimination through the use of monocomponent insulin]

Abstract

Since their first description 50 years ago severe forms of lipoatrophy appearing above all in girls and women are occasionally a cosmetically significant and therapeutically problematic side effect of the insulin treatment of diabetes mellitus. On two own female patients is shown, how the hitherto recommended measures failed in distinctive cases and only the treatment with monocomponent-insulin of the pig led to the restoration of the fatty tissue. The successful therapy of lipoatrophy with monocomponent insulin in all cases hitherto published confirms the hypothesis that a local antigen-antibody-reaction to highly molecular constituents of the commercial mixed insulins causes the atrophy of fatty tissue.