To investigate purine catabolism in exercising muscles of patients with muscle glycogen storage disease, we performed ischemic forearm exercise tests and quantitated metabolites appearing in cubital venous blood. Two patients with glycogen storage disease type V and three with glycogen storage disease type VII participated in this study. Basal lactate concentrations lowered in every patient with glycogen storage disease type V or type VII. Two patients with glycogen storage disease type VII, who had markedly elevated concentrations of serum uric acid (14.3 and 11.9 mg/dl, respectively), showed high basal concentrations of ammonia (118 and 79 mumol/liter, respectively; 23 +/- 4 mumol/liter in healthy controls) and of hypoxanthine (23.4 and 20.4 mumol/liter, respectively; 2.0 +/- 0.4 mumol/liter in healthy controls). Other patients showed near normal measurements of these metabolites. After forearm exercise, ammonia, inosine, and hypoxanthine levels increased greatly in every patient studied, in contrast with the lack of increase in lactate levels. The incremental area under the concentration curves for venous ammonia was 13-fold greater in the glycogen storage disease group than in controls (1,120 +/- 182 vs. 83 +/- 26 mumol X min/liter). The incremental areas of inosine and hypoxanthine were also greater in the glycogen storage disease group (29.2 +/- 7.2 vs. 0.4 +/- 0.1 and 134.6 +/- 23.1 vs. 14.9 +/- 3.2 mumol X min/liter, respectively). The incremental areas of ammonia in controls and in glycogen storage disease patients strongly correlated with those of hypoxanthine (r = 0.984, n = 11, P less than 0.005). These findings indicated that excess purine degradation occurred in the exercising muscles of patients with glycogen storage disease types V and VII, and suggested that the ATP pool in the exercising muscles may be deranged because of defective glycogenolysis or glycolysis.