[The metabolism of glucose monitored by 13C-NMR in the gerbil brain in vivo-natural course and application to the ischemic model].

Glucose metabolism is altered in various pathologic conditions in the brain, i. e. ischemia, epilepsy and hypoglycemia. Therefore, analysis of glucose metabolism in pathologic conditions needs careful investigation of that in steady state. 13C-NMR method allows continuous sequential monitoring of changes in metabolism of glucose in vivo. The natural abundance of 13C is quite low (1.1%) and by administering 13C labelled in various skeleton in glucose, it is possible to monitor the metabolites in vivo. In this study, 13C glucose labelled in 1-position of carbon was employed to investigate the metabolic pathways in the control and transient ischemic gerbil brain with reperfusion. Male mongolian gerbils weighing 60-80 g were employed in this study. The gerbils were anesthetized by intraperitoneal administration of pentobarbital. The right skull was exposed and a surface coli was placed directly above the skull bone. After the operation, the animals were fastened to the NMR probe vertically. 500 mg/kg of [1-13C] glucose was injected via femoral catheter. 13C-NMR spectra were serially obtained before and after injection with GX-270 NMR spectrometer (JEOL, Tokyo, Japan, 6.34 T). In other series of experiments, 30 minutes of cerebral ischemia were induced after 15 minutes of glucose injection by the bilateral common carotid artery occlusion. In the normal gerbil brain, after administration of [1-13C] glucose (500 mg/kg), alpha and beta-anomers of [1-13C] glucose peak appeared abruptly and reached its peak level at 7.5-15 min acquisition period. The C2 peak representing glutamate and/or glutamine appeared later. The C3 and C4 peak started to appear even later at 30-40 min.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)