Estimating reaction delay for glucose level prediction

The pancreas, liver and hypothalamus have a regulatory function in the glucose homeostasis. As the blood glucose level changes, these compartments react and the level changes again. Subsequently to this reaction, the interstitial glucose level changes with some delay. In this paper, I propose a hypothesis that the change of the blood glucose level includes information about the estimated rate with which the hypothalamus expects the blood glucose level to return to normal range, by means of regulatory mechanisms of glucose homeostasis. As the interstitial glucose level change reflects the blood glucose level change, I propose a method to estimate the blood-to-interstitial glucose level delay. It is an important factor for glucose level prediction. Once the delay was calculated, it was possible to relate the present blood glucose level and future interstitial glucose level with such coefficients, which do not seem to change over the time of the experiment to a significant extent. Perhaps, it is a parameterization of regulatory processes of glucose homeostasis, which could be possibly encoded within hypothalamus set-points. The delays were constant per subject and ranged from 7 min up to 34 min for hereditary hypertriglyceridemic rats of 230-480 g weight, in experiments with a variable glucose infusion rate. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.