These tools will no longer be maintained as of December 31, 2024. Archived website can be found here. PubMed4Hh GitHub repository can be found here. Contact NLM Customer Service if you have questions.


Pubmed for Handhelds

PUBMED FOR HANDHELDS

Search MEDLINE/PubMed

  • Title: Carnitine levels in severe infection and starvation: a possible key to the prolonged catabolic state.
    Author: Border JR, Burns GP, Rumph C, Schenk WG.
    Journal: Surgery; 1970 Jul; 68(1):175-9. PubMed ID: 10483466.
    Abstract:
    Tissue carnitine levels have been measured in man and the dog. Skeletal muscle carnitine levels rise in the dog with starvation to roughly twice the normal level. An equal degree of starvation plus peritonitis is associated with unchanged skeletal muscle carnitine levels. In the presence of peritonitis, sequential skeletal muscle biopsies show a progressive fall in the tissue carnitine levels with a subsequent rise in those animals which survive and clear their peritonitis. Normal human skeletal muscle levels are essentially the same as in the dog. A combination of sepsis and starvation in man is associated with essentially unchanged skeletal muscle carnitine levels, whereas pure sepsis without starvation is associated with decreased skeletal muscle carnitine levels. It is suggested that these changes are in the direction expected for a limitation of fat catabolism and, in the presence of a limited exogenous source of glucose, that this would result secondarily in a protein catabolic state to supply glucose for the body's energy needs.
    [Abstract] [Full Text] [Related] [New Search]