Effect of aging on cerebral cortex energy metabolism in hypoglycemia and posthypoglycemic recovery

Severe hypoglycemia, causing the cessation of spontaneous EEG, induced in cerebral cortex of rats of different ages, causes gross energy failure and extensive derangement of both carbohydrate and amino acid contents. During posthypoglycemic recovery of adult rats, there was moderate restitution of energy metabolism and both ATP concentration and adenine nucleotide pool remained still reduced, even if the creatine phosphate and ADP contents were close to normal. During recovery of adult rats there was a rise in glutamate and glutamine concentrations and the perturbated aspartate and gamma-aminobutyrate cerebral contents normalized. Ammonia content decreased to normal, while alanine content was markedly elevated. Aging does not affect the cerebral metabolic derangements occurring in severe hypoglycemia, but rather the metabolic changes that the brain tend to reverse during the posthypoglycemic restitution. In fact, there was lower restitution of the contents of cerebral cortical metabolites of "mature" and "senescent" rats in comparison with "adult" ones. Particularly, in older brains the contents of many amino acids and adenylate nucleotides remained largely abnormal.