Clinical and biochemical characterization of syndromes associated with defects of the insulin receptor.

During 3 years of collaboration we have detected 13 patients with insulin resistance syndromes among the 800 patients referred to our genetic counseling center for diagnosis during that time. It represents about 1.5% of all diagnostic problems of our genetic counseling center. Thus it seems to us that insulin receptor disorders are not as rare as previously appreciated. We describe here the clinical and biochemical findings of four of them as well as characteristics of disorders of insulin receptors. On cellular level these four patients represents the full scale of insulin receptor defects and demonstrate genetic heterogeneity of these disorders.