Acute Stress Hyperglycemia in Cats Is Associated with Struggling and Increased Concentrations of Lactate and Norepinephrine

Abstract

We characterized the changes in blood glucose concentrations in healthy cats exposed to a short stressor and determined the associations between glucose concentrations, behavioral indicators of stress, and blood variables implicated in stress hyperglycemia (plasma glucose, lactate, insulin, glucagon, cortisol, epinephrine, and norepinephrine concentrations). Twenty healthy adult cats with normal glucose tolerance had a 5-minute spray bath. Struggling and vocalization were the most frequent behavioral responses. There was a strong relationship between struggling and concentrations of glucose and lactate. Glucose and lactate concentrations increased rapidly and significantly in all cats in response to bathing, with peak concentrations occurring at the end of the bath (glucose baseline 83 mg/dL, mean peak 162 mg/dL; lactate baseline 6.3 mg/dL, mean peak 64.0 mg/dL). Glucose response resolved within 90 minutes in 12 of the 20 cats. Changes in mean glucose concentrations were strongly correlated with changes in mean lactate (r = .84; P < .001) and mean norepinephrine concentrations (r = .81; P < .001). There was no significant correlation between changes in mean glucose concentrations and changes in mean insulin, glucagon, cortisol, or epinephrine concentrations. Struggling and lactate concentrations were predictive of hyperglycemia. Gluconeogenesis stimulated by lactate release is the likely mechanism for hyperglycemia in healthy cats in this model of acute stress. Careful handling techniques that minimize struggling associated with blood collection may reduce the incidence of stress hyperglycemia in cats.

Effects of the glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) analogues exenatide, exenatide extended-release, and of the dipeptidylpeptidase-4 (DPP-4) inhibitor sitagliptin on glucose metabolism in healthy cats

“…Since only healthy animals were used for this study, counteracting hormones, such as glucagon but also norepinephrine (Rand et al, 2002), might have played a substantial role in preventing hypoglycaemia or even slight drops in blood glucose concentrations. A recent study in healthy rats showed an unexpected rise of glucose levels after acute administration of exenatide caused by stimulation of the sympathetic nervous system (Perez-Tilve et al, 2010).…”

Struggling behavior during restraint is regulated by stress experience

“…There are likely a number of significant relationships that remain to be found between struggling and other physiological and neural changes induced by restraint. There is already a literature indicating that greater amounts of struggling during immobilization is associated with altered immune system functioning [2], increased severity of gastric ulcers [14,27], increased lactate levels in blood [22] and lactic acid in muscle indicative of hyperglycemia and metabolic acidosis [7]. In these studies the amount of struggling observed was directly related to the severity of negative stress-induced physiological outcomes.…”

The effect of melatonin and/or complex vitamin B1,B6,B12 in modulating epinephrine-induced stress in male rats

“…Also, under stressful states, epinephrine depresses insulin secretion and activates beta receptors of pancreatic alpha cells, and stimulates glucagon production (Hadley and Levine 2007). Restraint for 1h (Zardooz et al 2006), water immersion (Radahmadi et al 2006) in the rats, and water spray bath for 15 minutes in the cats (Rand et al 2002) resulted in increased serum glucose levels. In the present study, elevated serum glucose was decreased with dietary melatonin supplementation.…”