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Excess Dietary Lysine Increases Skeletal Muscle and Plasma Trimethyllysine in Rats^1,2,3,

Alan T. Davis⁴, Ellen M. Kruggel^* and Susan Randall

Departments of Surgery, Michigan State University and Butterworth Hospital, Grand Rapids, MI 49503 ^* College of Human Medicine, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824 Wayne State University School of Medicine, Detroit, MI 48201

Trimethyllysine, a carnitine precursor, is a cation. This study was designed to determine whether dietary potassium and lysine concentration or oral lysine supplementation affects tissue carnitine and trimethyllysine concentration in rats. In Experiment 1, rats were fed a control diet, a low or high potassium diet, or a high lysine diet. In Experiment 2, rats were given by gavage a solution containing either L-proline (control) or L-lysine. In Experiment 1, rats fed the high lysine diet had significantly lower plasma total carnitine concentration than controls. Rats fed the high lysine diets had significantly higher concentrations of free trimethyllysine in skeletal muscle and plasma relative to control rats and rats fed the high potassium diet. Rats fed the low potassium diet had a similar increase in skeletal muscle free trimethyllysine. In Experiment 2, rats given lysine had significantly lower plasma total carnitine concentration, and significantly greater skeletal muscle and plasma trimethyllysine concentration relative to controls. We conclude that dietary potassium and lysine, and oral lysine, have a significant effect upon the distribution of carnitine and trimethyllysine in rats. The distributional changes caused by lysine, however, seem to be due to effects other than exchange of lysine for carnitine or trimethyllysine in tissues.

KEY WORDS: • rats • carnitine • lysine • trimethyllysine • cations

¹ Supported by a grant from the Butterworth Foundation.

² Presented in part at the 74th Annual Meeting of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, April 3, 1990, in Washington, DC [Davis, A. T. (1990) Effect of dietary cations upon trimethyllysine and carnitine content in the rat. FASEB J. 4: A800 (abs.)].

³ The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. This article must therefore be hereby marked "advertisement" in accordance with 18 USC section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.

⁴ To whom correspondence should be addressed at: Nutrition Research Laboratory—MC 50, Butterworth Hospital, 100 Michigan St. NE, Grand Rapids, MI 49503.

Manuscript received 23 November 1992. Revision accepted 8 February 1993.