Renal threshold for urinary glucose excretion by tilapia in response to orally administered carbohydrates and injected glucose

Two experiments, oral carbohydrate administration (Experiment 1) and vein glucose injection (Experiment 2), were conducted to gain more insight into the ability of hybrid tilapia, Oreochromis niloticus x O. aureus, to utilize different carbohydrates and to establish the kidney threshold for urinary glucose excretion. In Experiment 1, both glucose and starch were administered orally after the tilapia were fasted for 24 h. Plasma and urine were sampled from the fish at selected time intervals from 1 to 24 h thereafter. Higher (p <0.05) plasma and urine glucose concentrations were found in fish fed on glucose than in fish fed on starch. The concentration of plasma glucose of tilapia peaked at 3 h (25.45 mM for glucose; 8.24 mM for starch) after the oral ingestion of both carbohydrates. Maximum urinary glucose concentrations (48 mM for glucose; 10 mM for starch) in fish fed glucose and starch were at 3 and 4 h post administration. In Experiment 2, five concentrations (0, 0.08, 0.12, 0.16 and 0.24 g glucose ml(-1)) of glucose solution were injected into the caudal vein of the tilapia. Urine were sampled from the fish at 30-min time intervals from 0 to 6 h after the injection. Blood was sampled at 1 h after the injection. Higher urinary glucose concentrations were observed in fish injected with greater than or equal to 0.12 g glucose ml(-1). When the urinary glucose concentrations in fish injected with the various glucose concentrations were plotted against the plasma glucose concentrations of the fish 1 h after injection, the kidney threshold for urinary glucose excretion in tilapia appeared to be about 6 mM.