Protection Against ATP Depletion in Astrocytes Independently of Adenosine Receptor Activation

Here's a great article showing that exogenous adenosine can protect cultured astrocytes, taken from rats, from ATP depletion and cell death induced by a diminishment in glucose availability and also by peroxynitrite. The key point that interests me is that the protection afforded by adenosine was shown to be independent of the activation, by adenosine, of various adenosine receptor subtypes:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12093094

Those authors found that pyrimidines, which uridine is an example of, were not protective, but many other articles have shown that uridine is neuroprotective in many different models.