glucose tolerance

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glucose tolerance The ability of the body to deal with a relatively large dose of glucose is used to diagnose diabetes mellitus. The fasting subject ingests 75 g of glucose and the concentration of blood glucose is measured at intervals. In normal subjects the fasting glucose concentration is between 4.5 and 5.5 mmol/L, and rises to about 7.5 mmol/L, returning to the starting level within 1–1½ hours. In diabetics, the blood sugar concentration rises considerably higher and takes longer to return to the baseline value. The graph of the results forms a glucose‐tolerance curve.