The concept of" selective insulin resistance" has emerged as a unifying hypothesis in
attempts to reconcile the influence of insulin resistance with that of hyperinsulinemia in the
pathogenesis of macrovascular complications of diabetes. To explore this hypothesis in
endothelial cells, we designed a set of experiments to mimic the" typical metabolic insulin
resistance" by blocking the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase pathway and exposing the cells to
increasing concentrations of insulin (" compensatory hyperinsulinemia"). Inhibition of …