Abstract
Carbohydrate Metabolism after Burns It is well known both in man and animals that there is a rise in the level of blood sugar during the first few hours after a burn. E. J. Clark and R. J. Rossiter (Quart. J. Exp. Physiol, 32, 269 and 279; 1944) have studied the changes in carbohydrate metabolism produced by experimental skin burns in rats and rabbits. During the first three hours following a burn there is hyperglycæmia, rise of blood lactate, decrease of muscle glycogen, and either no change or a decrease in liver glycogen. The increased blood sugar comes chiefly from the muscle glycogen via the liver (Cori cycle). All these changes, except for the liver glycogen, could be reproduced by injection of adrenaline into normal animals. Injection of adrenaline into rats and rabbits always causes a rise of liver glycogen. Further, it was shown that liver slices from the burned animals formed glycogen from glucose (in vitro) much less readily than did liver slices from normal animals, whereas liver slices from adrenaline-injected animals formed glycogen normally. The authors conclude that the changes are mainly due to the liberation of adrenaline, but that in addition there must be some other factor acting on the liver, either accelerating glycogen breakdown or inhibiting its synthesis. Results of other workers suggest that some factor in addition to adrenaline is also at work in the hyperglycæmias of hæmorrhage and asphyxia. There is no clue as to what the additional factor may be, but it is probably common to burns, hæmorrhage and asphyxia.
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Research Items. Nature 154, 89–90 (1944). https://doi.org/10.1038/154089a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/154089a0