Lactic acidosis treatment by nanomole level of spermidine in an animal model

Lactic acidosis occurs in a number of clinical conditions, e.g. in surgeries, orthotopic liver transplant, and anesthetic agent administration, which has deleterious effects on the patient's survival. The most rational therapy for these patients, the sodium bicarbonate administration, cannot prevent those accompanying deficiencies and may actually be harmful. In addition, tromethamine adjusts the blood pH, it does not affect the lactate accumulation. Therefore, discovery of a therapeutic agent is still a major unsolved problem. In this study, the rats were divided into different groups and lactic acidosis type B was induced in them. Then, the effect of different injection doses of spermidine (0-20 nmol) on lactic acidosis was analyzed by measuring the lactate level and pH in the rat blood samples. The results showed that spermidine effectively and simultaneously inhibited the lactate and pyruvate accumulations, and also adjusted the pH of bloodstream. On the other hand, it has been shown (Damuni et al., 1984; Rahmatullah and Roche, 1988) that spermidine increases the activity of phosphatase, leading to prevention of lactate accumulation. The results indicate that administration of only nanomole level of spermidine may be the best treatment in the liver transplant and other patients suffering from lactic acidosis type B.