MINIREVIEW
Physical Water Compartments: A
Revised Concept of Perinatal Body Water Physiology
E. SULYOK
Institute of Health Promotion and Family Care, Faculty of Health
Sciences, University of Pécs, Pécs, Hungary
Received April 2, 2004
Accepted April 27, 2005
On-line available May 24, 2005
Summary
This review presents experimental data on the perinatal
significance of the recently developed concept of physical water
compartments. This concept implies that in addition to the
compartmentalization of body water into the intra- and
extracellular spaces, motionally distinct water fractions –
designated as physical water compartments – are also of
importance in the neonatal body fluid redistribution. H1-NMR
spectroscopy provides a quantitative estimate of tissue water
fractions with different mobility as multicomponent analysis of
the T2 relaxation decay curves allows us to determine the fast
and slow relaxing components of the curves corresponding to the
bound and free fractions of tissue water. Using this method,
free and bound water fractions were measured in fetal and
neonatal rabbit tissues (skin, skeletal muscle, liver, brain,
lung) at different stages of maturity and under conditions of
various fluid intake. It has been demonstrated that water
mobility in individual fetal/neonatal tissues varies greatly and
there is a general tendency of increasing free water at the
expense of bound water fraction with progressing maturation.
This tendency appears to be accelerated in the immediate
postnatal period when the tissue water content is markedly
reduced. The importance of hyaluronan in this process has also
been addressed as the hyaluronan content is markedly elevated in
the fetal/neonatal tissues and due to its polyanionic,
hydrophilic nature it has been claimed to play a prominent but
not clearly defined role in the control of tissue hydration.
Key words
Tissue water mobility • Proton nuclear magnetic resonance •
Hyaluronan • Perinatal period
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