The Staub-Traugott Phenomenon

Up to the present the masterly work of Allen and his collaborators has dominated the conception of diabetes mellitus, but recently another line of research has begun to turn thought in a different direction. In 1919 Hamman and Hirschman described the phenomenon which is now usually referred to as the Staub-Traugott effect. They showed that if two consecutive doses of glucose are given to a healthy subject the hyperglycaemia resulting from the second dose is lower than that after the first.

Studies on Blood Sugar - Effects upon the blood sugar of the repeated indigestion of glucose by Louis Hamman

In a communication to the Archives of Internal Medicine Hamman and Hirschmann have demonstrated the blood-sugar response Ito the ingestion of a single large dose of glucose in normal persons and in others suffering from various diseases. For this study 100 grams of glucose were administered in the early morning after the night fast, and the blood sugar and urine sugar estimated at short intervals thereafter. It was demonstrated that there are two important types of reaction, the normal and the diabetic. There is still a third type, not nearly so clearly distinguished as these two, the reaction of increased carbohydrate tolerance. Although the reaction in normal persons varies in different individuals and in the same individual under different circumstances, its general characters are as follows: The blood sugar rises rapidly, but seldom exceeds 0.15 per cent; it falls somewhat more slowly to the original level, the whole reaction being over in less than two hours. In diabetics the rise is higher and longer sustained. If the blood sugar surpasses 0.18 per cent, sugar usually appears in the urine, but sometimes it appears at a somewhat lower level; at other times it fails to appear, even though 0.2 per cent of blood sugar is exceeded. From two to five hours pass before the blood sugar reaches the original fasting level. When the carbohydrate tolerance is increased, there is only an insignificant rise in the blood sugar, which has usually a low fasting level.