AGT and adrenal gland hyperfunction: These findings are not unique to the diabetic SIECs as a persistent elevation of CREM/ICER and the concomitant suppression of gene transcription was also evident in other pathological conditions and cell types, such as hypercortisolemia (Shepard et al., 2005), hypercatecholemia (Lewin et al., 2009; Leopold et al., 2007) and hyperglycemia (Cho et al., 2012), in addition to angiotensin-II-treated cardiomyocytes (Ding et al., 2005) or oxidized LDL-treated insulin-secreting cells (Favre et al., 2011).