INS and hyperinsulinism: It is also important to notice that in our protocol the cellular consequences of chronic insulin treatment at the signalling and functional levels were all detected after a period of at least 18 hours of serum deprivation in 3T3-L1 cells and insulin starvation in both cell types, suggesting that the length of the starvation period might be another variable modulating the detrimental effects of hyperinsulinemia published here and elsewhere [10–13,26].