Renal substrate metabolism.

G Wirthensohn, WG Guder - Physiological reviews, 1986 - journals.physiology.org
G Wirthensohn, WG Guder
Physiological reviews, 1986journals.physiology.org
The kidney has long been the subject of metabolic studies (47, 49, 187). This organ, which
produces urine to excrete waste material and simultaneously conserves salts, water, and
metabolic substrates, needs 'metabolic energy for active transport processes. Already in the
early 1900s the high O2 consumption of the kidney (when compared with other organs) was
related to the physiological functions, especially to Na+ reabsorption (for review see ref. 47).
With increasing knowledge of metabolic pathways of carbohydrate, lipid, and amino acid …
The kidney has long been the subject of metabolic studies (47, 49, 187). This organ, which produces urine to excrete waste material and simultaneously conserves salts, water, and metabolic substrates, needs ‘metabolic energy for active transport processes. Already in the early 1900s the high O2 consumption of the kidney (when compared with other organs) was related to the physiological functions, especially to Na+ reabsorption (for review see ref. 47). With increasing knowledge of metabolic pathways of carbohydrate, lipid, and amino acid metabolism, most metabolic steps were found to be highly active in the kidney (49). The tight coupling of substrate metabolism to respiratory functions on one hand and energy-utilizing mechanisms on the other made the kidney an increasingly interesting organ for biochemical studies. By measuring arteriovenous differences, many substrates were shown to be taken up by the kidney in vivo (for review see ref. 94). Among these were lactate, fatty acids, ketone bodies, glutamine, dicarboxylic (eg, 2-0x0-glutarate) and tricarboxylic (eg, citrate) acids, amino acids (eg, glutamate, proline, glutamine), and glycerol. These findings pointed to a complex intrarenal organization of metabolic pathways. In 1928 it became clear that, besides its morphological heterogeneity, the kidney exhibits metabolic differences between cortex and medulla (99), in-
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