Effect of Adrenal Vein Ligation and Pancreatectomy on Metabolism of Renal Tissue

Abstract

Previous reports 1 2 reveal that ligation of the lumbo-adrenal veins results in an amelioration of experimental diabetes as evidenced by diminished glycosuria and ketonuria and a basal R.Q. elevated above the diabetic level. The present experiments were conducted in order to determine the ability of renal cortex to utilize carbohydrate. Renal tissue from diabetic animals is incapable of utilizing added glucose and the respiratory quotient remains close to 0.7. The results obtained on the ligated depancreatized animals are presented in Table I. It will be noted that the basal R.Q.'s on the tissues of dogs 3 and 4 were definitely above 0.7. In all the experiments, glucose produces a questionable rise in oxygen consumption and R.Q., while lactate causes a significant increase in both oxygen uptake and respiratory quotient. The level of the blood sugar at the time the kidney was excised did not influence the character of the result. Previous work on hypophysectomized depancreatized animals failed to reveal an elevated basal R.Q. 3 and the addition of glucose failed to stimulate metabolism but lactic acid was oxidized. Further experiments are now in progress to determine whether a larger series of kidneys excised from hypophysectomized depancreatized animals would yield results similar to those obtained from the depancreatized preparation with lumbo-adrenal veins ligated.