Amylin-mediated isletb-cell death is implicated in diabetogenesis. We pre-viously reported that fibrillogenic human amylin (hA) evokesb-cell apopto-sis through linked activation of Jun N-terminal kinase 1 (JNK 1) and a caspase cascade. Here we show that p38 kinase [p38 mitogen-activated pro-tein (MAP) kinase] became activated by hA treatment of cultured b-cells whereas extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) did not;