A Novel Therapeutic Measure for Metabolic Acidosis with Amino Acids

In hypoxic tissue conditions, pyruvate can not enter the Krebs cycle and lactic acid, produced from pyruvate, accumulates to induce lactic acidosis. Pyruvate, However, can also be converted to alanine by glutamate pyruvate transaminase, that could be enhanced by glutamate. Therefore, it would be a fundamental measure to treat the lactic acidosis in tissue hypoxic conditions when one can convert the accumulated lactic acid, through pyruvate, to alanine. To test the above hypothesis, we induced a lactic acidosis in cats and the effect of glutamate on recovery of acid base state and removal of the lactic acid from blood were assessed and the results were compared with those of bicarbonate administration, which is one of the most frequently used conventional measure for correction of the acid base state during lactic acidosis. The results were that glutamate and combined glutamate bicarbonate solutions not only restored the acid base status completely from the lactic acidosis in an hour or two, but also restored the blood level of lactate partially. We concluded that administration of glutamate solution to convert pyruvate into alanine is effective in preventing lactic acid accumulation and treating lactic acidosis.