Post-exercise glucose uptake and glycogen synthesis in human muscle during oral or i.v. glucose intake

Post-exercise muscle uptake and the intracellular fate of glucose was studied after oral or intravenous glucose administrations which caused similar plasma glucose concentrations, but high and moderate plasma insulin concentrations, respectively. Five male subjects participated in two experiments with 6-16 weeks in between. In the first experiment, the oral glucose experiment (OG), 1.4, 0.7 and 0.7 g.kg-1 body mass of glucose was given as oral loads at 0, 1 and 2 h of a 3-h post-exercise observation period (3hOP). In the second experiment, the glucose clamp experiment (GC), a glucose infusion clamp technique was employed. Based on repetitive, immediate plasma glucose measurements performed every 5th min, the rate of glucose infusion was adjusted to obtain the same temporal pattern of the plasma glucose concentration as in OG. The average plasma glucose concentrations during 3hOP were 9.2 +/- 1.1 and 9.3 +/- 1.2 mmol.1(-1) in OG and GC, respectively. The average arterio-femoral venous (a-v)f glucose differences were 1.0 +/- 0.3 and 0.5 +/- 0.2 mmol.1(-1) (p less than 0.001), while the average plasma insulin concentrations were 56 +/- 12 and 26 +/- 5 microU.ml-1 (p less than 0.001) for the two experiments. Increases in muscle glycogen concentrations were 28 +/- 4 and 25 +/- 3 mmol.kg-1 (NS) during 3hOP in OG and GC, respectively.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)