Hypoglycemia causes widespread white matter injury – an imaging study in transgenic mice

Abstract

Insulin-induced hypoglycemia presents the most important limitation to effective treatment for diabetes. Acute severe hypoglycemia may cause transient or permanent brain dysfunction such as confusion, cognitive impairment, seizures and coma. Deprivation of cellular glucose also contributes to the pathophysiology of ischemic brain injury. Recent neuroimaging and pathological studies of patients with severe hypoglycemic episodes suggest that white matter is also vulnerable to hypoglycemia. Although hypoglycemic brain injury is well documented in gray matter, little is known of mechanisms of injury in white matter deprived of glucose. In this study, we investigated the time course in vivo of axon and oligodendrocyte injury in a model of cerebral white matter injury in acute brain slices from adult transgenic mice.