ABSTRACT
The discovery that the skeletal muscle carnitine pool can be manipulated in animals and, more recently, humans has allowed great strides to be made in understanding the role of carnitine in muscle fuel metabolism. Moreover, the profound metabolic effects of modulating muscle carnitine availability have piqued the interest of those interested in the role that carnitine may play in human nutrition, both in various compromised clinical states and in the realm of sports nutrition. This chapter will build upon previous chapters, explaining the role that carnitine plays in the integration of fat and carbohydrate metabolism, and address the current understanding of how altering the muscle carnitine availability affects muscle fuel metabolism. Recent findings assessing both carnitine loading and depletion in human and animal models of health and disease will be considered. As such, the chapter aims to lay the mechanistic foundation for subsequent discussions on the (potential) role for carnitine in human nutrition.
