Effect of a single intravenous injection of branched chain amino acids on body temperature of cats undergoing general anesthesia.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the effect of a single intravenous injection of branched chain amino acids (BCAAs) on body temperature in cats undergoing general anesthesia.

STUDY DESIGN: Prospective, blinded, randomized, crossover, experimental study.

ANIMALS: A total of 10 healthy adult cats (five female and five male).

METHODS: Cats were anesthetized three times with three different treatments in a random order: 3 mL kg-1 lactated Ringer's solution (LRS), 100 mg kg-1 BCAAs (B100) or 200 mg kg-1 BCAAs (B200) solution immediately before induction of anesthesia. After induction, rectal temperature was measured every 5 minutes. Blood samples were collected for the measurement of blood glucose (BG) just before induction, at the end of the 90 minute period of anesthesia, and 24 hours after anesthesia induction. The differences between baseline and each subsequent rectal temperature, and BG measurements were analyzed. Areas under the curve (AUCs) for temperature differences were calculated for each animal for the anesthetic period (AUCT0-90 ). Parametric or nonparametric data were analyzed by one-way repeated measures anova or Friedman test. A value of p < 0.05 was considered significant.

RESULTS: There were no significant differences in AUCT0-90 between groups: 41.6 ± 7.7 for LRS, 43.4 ± 6.9 for B100 and 42.9 ± 7.5 for B200 (p = 0.368). No significant differences were observed in BG between groups at 90 minutes and 24 hours after anesthesia induction (p = 0.283 and p = 0.089, respectively). The incidence of hypoglycemia [BG ≤ 3.17 mmol L-1 (57 mg dL-1 )] after anesthesia tended to be higher in both B100 (4/10 cats) and B200 groups (3/10 cats) than in LRS group (1/10 cats).

CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE: A single, preanesthetic intravenous injection of BCAAs did not attenuate heat loss during anesthesia. More cats were hypoglycemic in the BCAA groups than in the LRS group.