Altered Glucose and Fatty Acid Oxidation in Hearts of the Spontaneously Hypertensive Rat

Metabolic fuel oxidation may be altered in left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH), but detailed characterizations are lacking. Although the spontaneously hypertensive rat (SHR) is a widely used experimental model of LVH, its myocardial fuel oxidation rates are unknown. The purpose of this study was to directly measure glucose and fatty acid (FA) oxidation in the SHR heart ex vivo under controlled loading conditions. Hearts from 15-weeks-old SHR and Sprague Dawley (SD) rats were perfused in a recirculating system and indices of cardiac performance were continuously monitored. The oxidation of glucose and palmitate were determined simultaneously at low and high workloads by the addition of U-14 C-glucose and 9.10-3H-palmitate to the recirculating perfusate. The results demonstrate that FA oxidation of SHR hearts is profoundly suppressed (60-80%) relative to that of the normotensive SD strain, particularly at high workloads. Glucose oxidation is also moderately elevated, yielding a marked (four-to-five-fold) increase in the ratio of glucose/FA oxidation rates in the SHR hearts. Since more ATP in generated per mole of oxygen consumed when glucose is the fuel scource, these results are consistent with the hypothesis that a shift away from FA use toward glucose contributes to the preservation of energetic economy in stable, concentric LVH.