Hepatic metabolism of 11 C-methionine and secretion of 11 C-protein measured by PET in pigs.

Hepatic amino acid metabolism and protein secretion are essential liver functions that may be altered during metabolic stress, e.g. after surgery. We wished to develop a dynamic liver PET method using the radiolabeled amino acid ¹¹ C-methionine to examine this question. Eleven 40-kg pigs were allocated to either laparotomy or pneumoperitoneum. 24 hours after surgery a 70-min dynamic PET scanning of the liver with arterial blood sampling was performed immediately after intravenous injection of ¹¹ C-methionine. Time course of arterial plasma ¹¹ C-methionine concentration was used as input function and that of liver tissue ¹¹ C-concentration as output function in an extended Patlak analysis that accounted for irreversible metabolism of ¹¹ C-methionine (hepatic systemic metabolic clearance K _met ) and secretion of ¹¹ C-protein + ¹¹ C-metabolites into blood (rate constant k _loss ). Appearance of ¹¹ C-proteins in arterial plasma was measured during the experiment. There were no statistically significant differences between the laparotomy group and the pneumoperitoneum group in any of the calculated parameters. Average mean hepatic systemic metabolic clearance K _met was 0.212 mL plasma/mL liver tissue/min, secretion rate constant from liver to blood k _loss 0.0054 min ^-1 , flux of methionine F _flux 3.59 μmol methionine/mL liver tissue/min, and the appearance rate of ¹¹ C-proteins in plasma R _prot 0.048 kBq/mL plasma/min. There was significant correlation between K _met and R _prot . In conclusion, the hepatic systemic metabolic clearance of ¹¹ C-methionine was significantly correlated to the appearance rate of ¹¹ C-proteins in plasma. It would be interesting to translate the present method to human studies for the development of a clinical quantitative test of hepatic protein secretion.
Competing Interests: None.