Severe hypoglycemia leads to accumulation of arachidonic acid in brain tissue.

Abstract

It is now well known that brain tissues only contain a small pool of free fatty acid (FFA), of which the polyenoic arachidonic and docosahexanoic acids comprise a minor part (see Bazan 1976, Marion & Wolfe 1979). This pool increases rapidly in ischemia and, under those circumstances, the polyenoic acids form the major part of the pool. Accordingly, it has been concluded that ischemia preferentially activates phospholipase A2.