Background: Type 1 diabetes mellitus is reportedly characterized by deficiencies of plasma total and free carnitine. Several inherited defects in fatty acid oxidation are associated with carnitine deficiency and with recurrent hypoglycemia. Hypoglycemia continues to be the major limiting factor in the management of type 1 diabetes. Herein, we sought to identify a subset of patients with abnorma...

BACKGROUND To develop and validate a simple and reliable high performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) method for the analysis of free L-carnitine in human seminal plasma and to investigate its clinical significance as a potentially additional means of evaluating the infertile male. METHODS After proteins in seminal plasma are precipitated with a mixture of acetonitrile and methanol (9:1; v/...

FREE FATTY ACIDS (FFA) IN EXCESS FFA: albumin molar ratios have been determined to additionally compromise mechanical performance in ischemic hearts. Carnitine, an intracellular carrier of FFA and an agent which is lost to the heart during ischemia, has been postulated to in part restore function with its replacement. To test whether its benefits are also operative in a setting of excess FFA, t...

The main objective for the present research was to assess the effect of cyclic starvation and L- carnitine supplementation on growth (body final weight, hepatosomatic index (HSI), daily growth rate (DGI), feed conversion ratio (FCR) and voluntary feed intake (VFI)), body composition (crude protein, crude lipid, ash and moisture), biochemical (plasma total protein, glucose, cholesterol, triglyce...

Carnitine is needed for a variety of important physiological functions in energy metabolism. Assessment of the carnitine status of an individual is compromised by limited data on the number of metabolic compartments of carnitine and their interrelationship, if any. Possible compartmentalization of carnitine in the blood of healthy adults was investigated because blood is one of the more readily...

Acetylation of added (-)carnitine by heart mitochondira coupled to the oxidation of pyruvate in the presence of malonate was inhibited, apparently competitively, by long chain acyl(+)carnitines although the activity of carnitine acetyltransferase (EC 2.3.1.7) itself was not affected. Mitochondria have been found to possess a translocase system that allows the transport of carnitine and acylcarn...

A trimethylated amino acid roughly similar in structure to choline, carnitine is a cofactor required for transformation of free long-chain fatty acids into acylcarnitines, and for their subsequent transport into the mitochondrial matrix, where they undergo beta-oxidation for cellular energy production. Mitochondrial fatty acid oxidation is the primary fuel source in heart and skeletal muscle, p...