CD36 and type 2 diabetes mellitus: Extracellular CD36, often referred to as “soluble CD36,” detected in human plasma by ELISA or Western blot analysis, has been shown in many studies to be elevated in patients with type II diabetes (fivefold compared with the lean control subjects and two- to threefold compared with the obese subjects) and to be inversely correlated with insulin-stimulated glucose clearance and positively correlated with fasting plasma insulin, glucose, and body mass index (Handberg et al., 2006).