Creatine kinase activity of urinary bladder and skeletal muscle from control and streptozotocin-diabetic rats.

The urinary bladder depends on intracellular ATP for the support of a number of essential intracellular processes including contraction. The concentration of ATP is maintained constant primarily via the rapid transfer of a phosphate from creatine phosphate (CP) to ADP catalyzed by the enzyme creatine kinase (CK). Since muscular pathologies associated with diabetes are in part related to intracellular alterations in metabolism, we have characterized the CK activity in both skeletal muscle and urinary bladder from control and streptozotocin-diabetic rats. The following is a summary of the results: 1) Bladder tissue from control rats showed linear kinetics with a Vmax = 390 nmoles/mg protein/min, and a Km = 275 microM. 2) Urinary bladder tissue isolated from diabetic rats displayed biphasic kinetics with Vmax = 65 and 324 nmoles/mg protein/min, and Km's = 10 microM and 190 microM respectively. 3) Skeletal muscle isolated from control rats showed linear kinetics with an approximate Vmax of 800 nmoles/mg protein/min and a Km of 280 microM CP. 4) Homogenates of skeletal muscle from diabetic rats showed complex kinetics not separable into distinct component forms. 5) The Km for ADP for both skeletal muscle and bladder was approximately 10 microM. These studies demonstrate that whereas bladders isolated from both control and diabetic rats possess a low-affinity isomer(s) of CK with similar maximum enzymatic activity, there is a high affinity isomer present within the urinary bladder muscle of diabetic rats that is not present in bladder tissue isolated from control rats. Skeletal muscle isolated from both diabetic and control rats exhibited a maximal activity 2 to 3 times higher than that of the bladder.