Glutamine as an Energy Substrate in the Liver

But I was going to mention that there are also lots of articles showing that glutamine can prevent or ameliorate experimental liver disease and pancreatic exocrine dysfunction in animals, etc. [see this article and the related articles, etc.: (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1971031)]. The different effects probably depend on a lot of different variables, such as the dosage and availability of phosphate and uridine, the degree of damage to the mitochondria, the degree of insulin resistance, and other factors. That's part of the reason something like glutamine would probably be more likely to be useful in diffuse brain injuries, such as traumatic brain injuries induced by concussive traumas, or milder ischemia, rather than as an adjunctive approach in severe strokes that are characterized by "raging" cores of necrotic tissue with no functional mitochondria that could oxidize glutamine-derived 2-oxoglutarate, etc. In contrast, purine nucleotides would be expected to be more "durable" in terms of their usefulness in damaged cells, given that purine nucleotides can provide ribose-5-phosphate for the formation of glycolytic intermediates and activate phosphofructokinase in the cytosol and be degraded into uric acid, etc. That presupposes that adenosine receptor activation isn't so deranged as to preclude their usefulness, but a lot of the research on adenosine in strokes doesn't make a distinction between the intracellular and extracellular actions and metabolic fates of adenosine-derived nucleotides. Adenosine that isn't infused too rapidly is not going to just behave like an A1 adenosine receptor agonist, for many reasons that I can't get into. But there are some situations in which there's severe damage or derangement of adenosine receptor signalling, and rapidly-administered, intravenous adenosine can be detrimental under those extreme circumstances. But obviously one would want to discuss these things with one's doctor, even though no one's talking about using intravenous adenosine in a willy-nilly fashion.