Glutamine supplementation

Glutamine supplementation

Intravenous glutamine supplementation is standard care when parenteral nutrition is given for critical illness. There are data of a reduced mortality when glutamine supplementation is given. In addition, standard commercial products for parenteral nutrition do not contain any glutamine due to glutamine instability in aqueous solutions. For the majority of critical ill patients who are fed enter...

Clinical use of glutamine supplementation.

Endogenous production of glutamine may become insufficient during critical illness. The shortage of glutamine is reflected as a decrease in plasma concentration, which is a prognostic factor for poor outcome in sepsis. Because glutamine is a precursor for nucleotide synthesis, rapidly dividing cells are most likely to suffer from a shortage. Therefore, exogenous glutamine supplementation is nec...

Glutamine supplementation for critically ill adults.

BACKGROUND Glutamine is a non-essential amino acid which is abundant in the healthy human body. There are studies reporting that plasma glutamine levels are reduced in patients with critical illness or following major surgery, suggesting that glutamine may be a conditionally essential amino acid in situations of extreme stress. In the past decade, several clinical trials examining the effects o...

A.S.P.E.N. position paper: parenteral nutrition glutamine supplementation.

Enteral glutamine supplementation in critically ill patients

In Critical Care recently, we read with great interest the systematic review and meta-analysis by van Zanten and colleagues, who compared enteral glutamine with control in critically ill patients in terms of clinical outcomes [1]. We enthusiastically congratulate and applaud them for their groundbreaking work on this topic. However, some issues in their study should be noted and further discuss...