Glucose uptake in the brainstem of thiamine-deficient rats.

Acute dietary deficiency of thiamine was produced in immature female rats. Uptake of glucose by brainstem nuclei was determined by autoradiographic examination of tissue concentrations of 14-C-3-O-methyl-d-glucose following a test dose, and compared with levels in normal and isocaloric control animals. The experiment showed that glucose uptake was depressed in the lesions of thiamine deficiency as compared with the controls, that the depression occurred with the occurrence of morphologic evidence of tissue edema, and that the depression was temporally independent of the breakdown of the blood-brain barrier to protein which is found in the late, necrotic lesions.