Elizabeth Seaquist

Current Position (s): Professor, Division of Endocrinology and Diabetes, Department of Medicine; Director, Center for Diabetes Research; Program Director, General Clinical Research Center;  Associate Program Director, Career Advancement Program for Clinical Research Scholars Program (Roadmap K12 Program) 

Research Interests and areas of potential collaboration:
Dr. Seaquist is a clinical investigator interested in the complications of diabetes.  Her experimental work focuses on the effect of diabetes on the brain metabolism, structure, and function. Dr. Seaquist is currently collaborating with Drs. Kamil Ugurbil and Edward Auerbach in experiments designed to first identify the glucose sensing regions in the human brain using arterial spin labeling techniques and then to determine if these regions sense glucose differently in patients with hypoglycemia unawareness and type 1 diabetes.   The metabolic role of brain glycogen is another area of interest in Dr. Seaquist’s laboratory.  The team of Drs Seaquist, Rolf Gruetter, and Gulin Oz, has developed methods that for the first time allow the detection of brain glycogen in the living human brain.  Future studies will focus on defining the role of brain glycogen in the syndrome of hypoglycemia unawareness.

Dr. Seaquist also directs the University of Minnesota site for the ACCORD (Action to Control Cardiovascular Risk in Diabetes) Trial.  The purpose of this NIH funded clinical trial is to determine if establishing normoglycemia in patients with type 2 diabetes can reduce cardiovascular events.

Specific projects underway are listed below.
1. The effect of diabetes on in vivo cerebral glucose metabolism.
My colleagues and I have developed methods to measure intracerebral concentrations of native glucose in humans using high field magnetic resonance spectroscopy.  We are now interested in defining the effects of chronic hyperglycemia and recurrent hypoglycemia on brain glucose concentrations.

2. The effect of diabetes on functional activation of the brain.
These studies use functional MRI to determine whether neuronal activation is altered in patients with diabetes.

3. The role of reduced beta cell mass in the regulation of in vivo insulin secretion.
In this investigation, the effect of hemipancreatectomy and reduction of beta cell mass on in vivo insulin secretion and overall glucose tolerance are examined in healthy volunteers who have undergo hemipancreatectomy for the purpose of pancreas donation.

Selected publications:

Seaquist ER, Kahn SE, Clark PM, Hales CN, Porte D, Robertson RP:  Hyperproinsulinemia is associated with increased beta cell demand following hemipancreatectomy.  J Clin Invest 97:455-460, 1996.

Gruetter R, Garwood M, Ugurbil K, Seaquist ER:  Resolved observation of glucose in 1H NMR spectra of the human brain at 4 Tesla.  Magn Res Med 36:1-6, 1996.

Seaquist ER:  Comparison of arterialized venous sampling from the hand and foot in the assessment of in vivo glucose metabolism.  Metabolism 46(11):1364-1366, 1997.

Seaquist ER, Gruetter R:  Identification of a high concentration of scyllo-inositol in the brain of a healthy human subject using 1H- and 13C-NMR.  Magn Res Med 39:313-316, 1998.

Gruetter R, Ugurbil K, Seaquist ER:  Steady-state cerebral glucose concentrations and transport in the human brain.  J Neurochem 70:397-408, 1998.

Gruetter R, Seaquist ER, Kim S, Ugurbil K:  Localized in vivo 13C NMR of glutamate metabolism in the human brain.  Developmental Neuroscience, 20: 380-388. 1998.

Semakula C, Damberg G, Kendall D, Seaquist ER.  The use of the hypoglycemic clamp in the assessment of pituitary function.  -Clinical Endocrinology, 51: 709-714. 1999.