nbme24/Block 3/Question#24
A 3-month-old boy is brought to the emergency ...
Gluconeogenesis
neonem
I don't think you could have *totally* ruled out the other answers - I picked glycogen breakdown because it sounded kind of like Von Gierke disease (glucose-6-phosphatase) to me: characterized by fasting hypoglycemia, lactic acidosis, and hepatomegaly since you're not able to get that final step of exporting glucose into the blood. However, I guess in this case you wouldn't see that problem of glycerol/fructose infusion not increasing blood glucose. Nice catch.
+6 2019-06-02T04:15:52Z
vshummy
I think you were super smart to catch Von Gierke! Just to refine your answer b/c I had to look this up after reading your explanation, von gierke has a problem with gluconeogenesis as well as glycogenolysis. So they’d have a problem with glycerol and fructose but also galactose since they all feed into gluconeogenesis before glucose-6-phosphatase. Great thought process!
+7 2019-06-07T22:45:40Z
submitted by tea-cats-biscuits(63), 2019-05-20T02:24:14Z
The disease here is fructose bisphosphatase deficiency. In it, IV glycerol or fructose doesn’t help because both enter the gluconeogenesis pathway below fructose bisphophatase. Galactose on the other hand enters above it. I don’t think you really need to know this to choose the correct answer since the clinical picture of fasting hypoglycemia that is corrected w/ some sort of sugar that can enter the gluconeogenesis pathway should clue you into the right answer.