Cerebral energy metabolism during bicuculline-induced status epilepticus in spontaneously hypertensive rats

The cerebral blood flow is lower in spontaneously hypertensive rats than in normotensive anaesthetized and mechanically ventilated rats during bicuculline-induced seizures, presumably due to the increase in vascular resistance in the hypertensive rats. This study investigates whether the hypertensive rats develop more severe derangement of the cerebral energy metabolites than normotensive rats because of the reduced cerebral blood flow. After 20 min of continuous seizure activity both normotensive and hypertensive rats had significantly decreased levels of phosphocreatine, ATP and glycogen as well as increased lactate and lactate/pyruvate ratio within the parietal cortex compared to controls. The metabolic disturbances were somewhat less pronounced in the hypertensive rats than in the normotensive rats. Thus, ADP was significantly increased in normotensive rats only and the lactate/pyruvate ratio was higher in the normotensive rats. We conclude that spontaneously hypertensive rats are not more prone than normotensive rats to derangement of cerebral energy metabolites during short term bicuculline-induced seizures and that insufficient blood flow is not the primary cause of the metabolic alterations.