EFFECT OF EPINEPHRINE ON PLASMA LIPID COMPONENTS AND INTERRELATIONSHIPS IN NORMAL AND EPILEPTIC HUMANS

Abstract

THE chemical composition of the blood of epileptics has been examined by several investigators for differences from the normal which might indicate the mechanism producing the convulsive state, or further characterize the condition (1). Thus far biochemical studies of this type have been unfruitful. In a different approach to this problem, Dury et al. (2) used epinephrine as a “single agent stimulus” affecting many metabolic parameters to determine whether differences could be elicited in specific blood constituents between normal and epileptic subjects. They found that a pattern of changes in the concentration of plasma potassium and glucose appeared after epinephrine administration in epileptics, which differed significantly from responses found in normal subjects. An acute ketonemia and ketonuria after epinephrine in normal subjects was reported by Hubbard (3). This presumably was referable to the inhibitory action of epinephrine upon the combustion of carbohydrates by peripheral tissues (4). It is of interest in this regard that in the study by Dury et al. (2) it was shown that the plasma glucose concentration in epileptics after epinephrine was significantly less at twenty minutes than in comparable normal subjects, and the shape of the blood glucose curve over a period of one hundred and twenty minutes was depressed in the epileptic group compared with the glycemic curve in the normal group. The present study was undertaken as an extension of the latter study, to determine the effect of epinephrine on the concentrations of plasma lipid components and the relationships of these lipid fractions in normal and epileptic individuals.