Glycogen synthesis in brain and astrocytes is inhibited by chronic lithium treatment

Lithium is a drug widely used to treat bipolar disorder. It has been shown to inhibit the total activity of phosphoglucomutase (PGM) from rat brains. In this work, we show that lithium inhibits in vitro PGM activity in the cortex, hippocampus, striatum, brainstem and cerebellum. As a compensatory effect, chronic lithium treatment of Wistar rats for 6 weeks caused a 1.6-fold upregulation of cortex PGM activity. No difference was observed in the other areas tested. Another effect of chronic lithium administration was a drastic reduction of glycogen content in rat brains, as PGM activity is essential for its synthesis. In a primary culture of astrocytes, which are the main cellular components of the brain that produce glycogen, administration of 1 mM lithium for 3 days markedly reduced the steady state of glycogen content. In agreement with this result, lithium did not cause insulin-like effects as previously observed in hepatocytes where lithium activated glycogen synthesis. Reduction of glycogen content was due to inhibition of glycogen synthesis, as incorporation of [14U−C]-glucose into glycogen was impaired by lithium. Consistent with these results, incubation of glucose-starved astrocytes with lithium did not stimulate dephosphorylation of glycogen synthase, which normally occurs with re-feeding of glucose. Furthermore, in a chronically treated astrocyte culture, glycogen synthase was phosphorylated constitutively. Our results indicate that chronic lithium treatment can inhibit glycogen synthesis in brain suggesting that this effect might contribute to lithium's therapeutic effect.