An increase in adenosine-5’-triphosphate (ATP) content in rostral ventrolateral medulla is engaged in the high fructose diet-induced hypertension

Authors: Kay LH Wu*, Chun-Ying Hung, Julie YH Chan and Chih-Wei Wu j of biomed sci 2014 jan 27 21(1)8 Doi 10.1186/1423-0127-21-8 The purpose of this article was to determine if fructose was being utilized as an energy source in RVLM and whether fructose lead to enhanced sympathetic system activity. This study is very interest because they did both in vitro and in vivo studies along with multiple techniques (western blot, immunofluorescence, Gene silencing and etc.) in order to address their questions. Basically high fructose feed rats had higher systemic arterial pressure control rats. They found that ATP was elevated along with protein expression of ketohexokinase, Glut 2 and Glut . They then wanted to show that blocking ATP production would lead to decreases sympathetic activation. They found that infusion of an ATP synthase inhibitor (oligomyocin) they had blunted pressor responses in the high fructose group, as for the normal diet rats they found pressor responses were only slightly blunted. They then did a series of experiments in cell culture. They used the N2a cells and found that in response to 72hr exposure to fructose the cells had higher ATP, and dopamine content. Also there was higher pyruvate content, glut 2, glut 5 and ketohexokinase expression. They were able to show using gene silencing that if ketohexokinase is inhibited that ATP and pyruvate and dopamine release is decreased compared to control. Conclusion: They showed that RVLM neurons are capable of metabolizing fructose and using for energy. The ATP generated from fructose breakdown leads to increase in blood pressure. Therefore, high fructose diet leads to increased sympathetic activation due to increased ATP production in the RVLM. -MD J Biomed Sci. 2014 Jan 27;21(1):8. doi: 10.1186/1423-0127-21-8. J Biomed Sci. 2014 Jan 27;21(1):8. doi: 10.1186/1423-0127-21-8.