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Background and Purpose: Based on the fact that traumatic brain injury is associated with mitochondrial dysfunction we aimed at localization of mitochondrial defect and attempted to correct it by thiamine., Experimental Approach: Interventional controlled experimental animal study was used. Adult male Sprague-Dawley rats were subjected to lateral fluid percussion traumatic brain injury. Thiamine was administered 1 h prior to trauma; cortex was extracted for analysis 4 h and 3 d after trauma., Key Results: Increased expression of inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) and tumor necrosis factor receptor 1 (TNF-R1) by 4 h was accompanied by a decrease in mitochondrial respiration with glutamate but neither with pyruvate nor succinate. Assays of TCA cycle flux-limiting 2-oxoglutarate dehydrogenase complex (OGDHC) and functionally linked enzymes (glutamate dehydrogenase, glutamine synthetase, pyruvate dehydrogenase, malate dehydrogenase and malic enzyme) indicated that only OGDHC activity was decreased. Application of the OGDHC coenzyme precursor thiamine rescued the activity of OGDHC and restored mitochondrial respiration. These effects were not mediated by changes in the expression of the OGDHC sub-units (E1k and E3), suggesting post-translational mechanism of thiamine effects. By the third day after TBI, thiamine treatment also decreased expression of TNF-R1. Specific markers of unfolded protein response did not change in response to thiamine., Conclusion and Implications: Our data point to OGDHC as a major site of damage in mitochondria upon traumatic brain injury, which is associated with neuroinflammation and can be corrected by thiamine. Further studies are required to evaluate the pathological impact of these findings in clinical settings., (Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier B.V.)

Glutamate is a key metabolite and major excitatory neurotransmitter, degraded through transformation to 2-oxoglutarate which is further catabolized by 2-oxoglutarate dehydrogenase complex (OGDHC). Both the glutamate excitotoxicity and impaired OGDHC activity are hallmarks of neurodegeneration. This work quantifies a relationship between the brain OGDHC activity and glutamate levels, assessing its diagnostic value to characterize (patho)physiology. A moderate to strong positive correlation of the two parameters determined under varied physiological settings (brain regions, seasons, gender, pregnancy, rat line), is revealed. Mitochondrial impairment (OGDHC inhibition or acute hypobaric hypoxia) decreases the interdependence, even when the parameter means do not change significantly. Compared to the cortex, the cerebellum exhibits a lower inter-individual glutamate variation and a weaker glutamate-OGDHC interdependence. Specific metabolism of the brain regions is also characterized by a positive correlation between glutamate and γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) concentrations in the cortex but not in the cerebellum. In contrast, a strong positive correlation between glutamate and glutamine is present in both the cortex and cerebellum. The differences in metabolic correlations are in line with transcriptomics data which suggest that glutamate distribution between competitive pathways contributes to the brain-region-specific features of the interdependences of glutamate and OGDHC or GABA., (Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier Inc.)