Effects of two dihydropyridine calcium channel blockers on cerebral metabolism and blood flow in traumatized rat brain.

The effect of two dihydropyridine calcium (Ca) channel blocking drugs on cerebral glucose metabolism (LCGU), blood flow (LCBF), and blood flow-metabolism coupling were studied in thermally injured rat brain using quantitative radioautographic techniques. No reversal of the previously noted LCGU depression caused by the freezing lesion (Pappius, 1981) was detected following treatment with either PY-108-068 (PY) or nimodipine (NIM). These results therefore provided no support for the role of Ca in the mechanism of functional disturbances induced by cold injury (Pappius and Wolfe, 1983b), though they do not rule out its involvement. Treatment with PY, but not NIM, reestablished the normal LCBF-LCGU relationship in cortical areas, which has been shown to be disturbed by the freezing lesion and in subcortical and brainstem structures, in which the alteration caused by the injury was not as pronounced. The results suggest that the mechanism that apparently uncouples LCBF from LCGU in injured brain is altered in the presence of PY. However, since NIM did not have the same effect on LCBF, it is not clear whether the effects of PY relate to blockade of Ca channels or some other effect of PY.