Abstract
The initial distribution of tracer amounts of 2-deoxyglucose between plasma and brain tissue, relative to native glucose, and the rate of accumulation of 2-deoxyglucose-6-phosphate were determined in brain regions of rats given kainic acid intravenously. Regional plasma flow was measured in a comparable group of animals. A previously described compartmental model was used to obtain estimates of rates of glucose transport and of glucose phosphorylation. Both rates were significantly increased in entorhinal cortex, hippocampus, amygdala, and septal nucleus. From measured brain tissue and plasma glucose concentrations, glucose fluxes were also calculated in terms of either irreversible or reversible Michaelis-Menten kinetics. In all brain regions of control rats and in six of the ten regions studied in rats given kainic acid, rates of glucose transport calculated in terms of the Michaelis-Menten models were consistent with those estimated by the tracer 2-deoxyglucose procedure. However, in the four regions in which glucose metabolism was stimulated, rates of glucose transport calculated from the behaviour of tracer 2-deoxyglucose were considerably higher than rates calculated from measured concentrations of glucose in plasma and brain tissue using Michaelis-Menten models. The possibility is considered that in those regions that are metabolically stimulated by kainate, there is an increasing asymmetry between the luminal and abluminal membranes of the capillary endothelium in the permeability to glucose and its analogs. An alternative proposal is that in the model used to analyse the tracer 2-deoxyglucose data, the assumption of a rapid mixing of tracer throughout the endogenous pool of tissue glucose prior to phosphorylation becomes invalid. The discrepancies between tracer and native glucose in these particular regions of rats given kainate are consistent with an apparent metabolic compartmentation. The influence of kainate on plasma flow was found to differ regionally, with flow in entorhinal cortex, hippocampus, and amygdala being unchanged. There is some evidence for increased rates of glycolysis relative to oxidative metabolism in these regions.