The relationship between erythrocyte transketolase activity and the ‘TPP effect’ in Wernicke's encephalopathy and other thiamine deficiency states

Heterogeneous Expression of Transketolase in Rat Brain

“…Fibroblasts derived from patients with Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome exhibit diminished affinity for TPP (Blass and Gibson, 1977 ;Mukherjiee et al ., 1987) or reduced TK activity (Jung et al ., 1993b) . Thiamine deficiency diminishes TK activity in human tissues (Kuriyama et al ., 1980 ;Nixon et al ., 1990) and rat brain (Giguere and Butterworth, 1987 ;Gibson et al ., 1989), as well as in cultured hepatocytes (Beliveau and Freedland, 1980) . Thus, abnormalities in TK may play a causal role in the disease process .…”

New Assays for Transketolase

“…TK has been implicated in a latent human genetic disease, Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome. 1 ) TK assays provide a sensitive measure of thiamine deficiency. In the brain of alcohol-fed rats, the enzyme activity and concentration decreased.…”

Decreased transketolase activity contributes to impaired hippocampal neurogenesis induced by thiamine deficiency

“…2007), PPP components involved in producing ribose‐5‐phosphate are likely to highly localize around brain midline. In addition, clinical and experimental studies have convincingly demonstrated that TD inhibits significant TK activity, a benchmark which has been used to assess TD status and diagnose Wernicke’s encephalopathy (Sauberlich 1984; Nixon et al. 1990; Rooprai et al.…”

“…Because cell proliferation needs a large amount of nucleotides and ribose-5-phosphate is required for biosynthesis of nucleotides (Boren et al 2006;Hu et al 2007), PPP components involved in producing ribose-5-phosphate are likely to highly localize around brain midline. In addition, clinical and experimental studies have convincingly demonstrated that TD inhibits significant TK activity, a benchmark which has been used to assess TD status and diagnose Wernicke's encephalopathy (Sauberlich 1984;Nixon et al 1990;Rooprai et al 1996). Thus, the inhibition of TK activity induced by TD could lead to dysfunction of PPP and impair synthetic metabolism of ribose-5-phosphate and NADPH , thereby resulting in biosynthetic disturbance of nucleotides and cellular oxidative stress.…”