[Studies on cyclic 3', 5'-AMP system in human brain and its clinical application in Neurosurgical practice (author's...

Literatures showed that cyclic AMP of cultured neoplastic cells of any kind was very low in concentration and also the effect of cyclic AMP and its derivatives on the malignant cells, especially on the malignant glioma, was already reported in vivo or in vitro from several neurosurgical units. The intrinsic content of cyclic AMP of the human cerebrum and the human brain tumors was first reported by authors in 1971. In this presentation the authors intended to confirm that the lower concentration of the cyclic AMP the more histologically malignant cerebral neoplasm, as well as in the cerebrospinal fluid, was observed. Concentration of cyclic AMP in the subcortical white matter, glioma, meningioma and medullobalstoma was much lower than in the gray matter tissue, however, it was not clear that the difference of the cyclic AMP concentration be possibly related to the malignancy of the human brain tumor. Furthermore, the cyclic AMP content of the cerebrospinal fluid of the patients with various brain tumor was not clearly different. The activity of adenyl cyclase was reported the highest in the synaptosome-containing fraction of the rat brain homogenate and this fact was significantly consistent with the finding that the highest concentration of the cyclic AMP was found in the human grey matter tissue. With the human brain gray matter authors determined successfully the activity of the human cerebral phosphodiesterase, which was probably localized in the post-synaptic membrane and was 158 nmole/mg protein/min. Its apparent Km was 0.9 x 10(-4) M. The results reported above have suggested the important participation of the cyclic AMP to cerebral synaptic transmission of nerve impulses, which was studied by light and electron-microscopic autoradiography utilizing the pulse labeling method with 3H-adenine. According to our study the majority of the adenyl cyclase of the human cerebrum was located synaptic structure and the finding obtained was quite compatible, as the first morphological study, with previously reported biochemical analyses. It was indicated that the cyclic AMP in the human brain was concerned to the cerebral synaptic transmission of nerve impulses and this should be very interesting and important to the clinical application for recovering cerebral function of neurosurgical patients.