Quantifying Manganese in Lymphocytes to Assess Manganese Nutritional Status

AklhikoMatauda,MlekoKimura,MlklkoKataoka,’Shin-IchIOhkuma,1MakotoSato,1 andYoshinorlItokawa To clanfy whether manganese nutritional status is better reflected by the manganese concentration in lymphocytes or in whole blood, we injected manganese solutions intrave-nously into manganese-deficient rats and determined man-ganese concentrations in lymphocytes, whole blood, and various tissues. The manganese concentrations in lympho-cytes and tissues, but not in whole blood, were significantly less in manganese-deficient rats than in normal rats. These low values could be prevented by intravenous injection of manganese in a dose-dependent manner. These results suggest that, for assessment of manganese nutritional sta-tus, measurement of manganese in lymphocytes is better than that in whole blood. AdditionalKeyphrases:manganese-deficient rats atomicab-sorptionspectrophotometry. parenteralnutrition The technique of total parenteral nutrition (TPN) was introduced by Dudrick et al. (1) in 1968. The recent im-provements in patient management and in the composition of TPN solutions have made it more likely that such nutrition is adequate to maintain the life of the patient. With an increasing number of patients depending solely on TPN, the necessity for supplementation with essential trace elements has been recognized (2-4). Manganese is one of the essential trace elements that should be supplemented during TPN (5). Over- or under-dosage of manganese can cause metabolic complications (6, 7), making it important to assess the nutritional status of manganese during TPN. We have previously reported that manganese concentrations in whole blood or plasma do not correlate to that in various tissues during TPN in rats (8). Here we report a study to clarify whether manganese concentration in lymphocytes reflects the manganese nu-tritional status. We measured manganese concentrations in lymphocytes and various tissues from manganese-defi-cient or-sufficient rats