The content of NADH in rat skeletal muscle at rest and after cyanide poisoning

Abstract

The concentration of NADH was determined a high-oxidative muscle (soleus) and a high-glycolytic muscle (extensor digitorum longus, EDL) from resting rats. The NADH content of freeze-clamped control muscles was 0.35 +/- 0.04 (mean +/- S.D.) and 0.31 +/- 0.04 mmol/kg dry wt. in EDL and soleus respectively, and increased to peak values of 0.58 +/- 0.05 (EDL) and 0.87 +/- 0.10 (soleus) after 10 min of NaCN treatment. The [lactate]/[pyruvate] ratio, which was not significantly changed in soleus and increased only slightly in EDL after NaCN incubation, shows that only minor changes occurred in the cytosolic NADH concentration. Provided that the major part of muscle NADH is located in the mitochondria it can be calculated that the mitochondrial NADH content in skeletal muscle at rest is about 36 (soleus) and 60% (EDL) of the anoxic value, respectively. These results are in contrast with previous studies with the surface-fluorescence technique, where mitochondrial NAD appeared to be almost completely reduced in resting skeletal muscle.