Effects of high-fat diet on glucose metabolism in isolated pancreatic acini of rats.

The purpose of the present study was to document the metabolism of glucose and its responsiveness to insulin in isolated pancreatic acini from rats fed either a low- or high-fat diet. The different steps investigated were labeled glucose oxidation, lactate production, hexokinase activity, and glucose transport, which was assessed by using both 3-O-methylglucose and 2-deoxyglucose. The acinar capacity to metabolize glucose (sum of CO2 plus lactate) was decreased by 50% by feeding the rats a high-fat diet. The impairment of glucose metabolism could not be explained by a defect in the glucose phosphorylation step because hexokinase activity was not changed in isolated acini from rats fed a high-fat diet. The effect of a high-fat diet was entirely accounted for by a reduction in the glucose transport rate that was achieved through a decrease in glucose transport Vmax with no change in Km. We could not detect any effect of insulin on glucose metabolism or 2-deoxyglucose uptake, whatever the diet composition. This work establishes that a high-fat diet, known to markedly alter pancreatic exocrine enzymes, also induces a large decrease in acinar glycolytic flux, raising the question of the relation between these two sets of adaptive changes.