Pancreatic Fat Content and β-Cell Function in Men With and Without Type 2 Diabetes
Response to Saisho, Butler, and Butler
- Maarten E. Tushuizen, MD1,
- Mathijs C. Bunck, MD1,
- Petra J. Pouwels, PHD2 and
- Michaela Diamant, MD, PHD1
- 1Department of Endocrinology / Diabetes Center, VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
- 2Department of Physics and Medical Technology, VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
- Corresponding author: M. Diamant, MD, PhD, Department of Endocrinology / Diabetes Center, VU University Medical Center, P.O. Box 7057, 1007 MB Amsterdam, Netherlands. E-mail: m.diamant{at}vumc.nl
We thank Saisho, Butler, and Butler (1) for their interest in our study (2). They confirm and extend our findings by providing additional data on pancreatic fat content in individuals with and without type 2 diabetes using different technologies, i.e., computed tomography (CT) to measure pancreas volume and morphometric analyses of intrapancreatic fat spaces to estimate fat in postmortem pancreas sections (3).
As repeatedly stated in our paper (2), proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H-MRS) cannot discriminate between intracellular fat in adipocytes versus nonadipocytes. Similar to Saisho, Butler, and Butler, we reasoned that since islets constitute only ∼2% of the pancreas mass, the fat signal obtained by 1H-MRS …
