The time course of glucose metabolism in rat cerebral ischemia with middle cerebral artery occlusion-reperfusion model and the effect of MK-801.

Following cerebral ischemia, the extracellular concentration of excitatory amino acids increases, and the excitatory cell death may play an important role contributing to ischemic neuronal damage. Although sequential metabolic changes in permanent local cerebral ischemia have been reported, the effect of reperfusion in local cerebral ischemia on glucose metabolism is less clear. In order to investigate the time course change of glucose metabolism in a middle cerebral artery occlusion-reperfusion model and the effect of dizocilpin (MK-801) on glucose metabolism, the 14C-Deoxyglucose method was used. Hypermetabolism occurred at 30 min after the middle cerebral artery (MCA) occlusion, and reached a peak at 60 min after ischemia in both ischemic core and penumbra. The shift from hyper- to hypometabolism was observed after the ischemia. The reperfusion facilitated the decrease of cerebral glucose metabolism in the ischemic region following 2 h of MCA occlusion. The pretreatment of MK-801 (0.4 mg kg-1) inhibited both increased glucose metabolism during ischemia and decreased glucose metabolism during reperfusion. These findings support the hypothesis that excitation-induced hyper-metabolism plays a major role in the ischemic insult following focal cerebral vascular occlusion.