-
Curr Opin Clin Nutr Metab Care · Mar 2015
ReviewGlutamine and antioxidants: status of their use in critical illness.
- Arthur R H van Zanten.
- Department of Intensive Care, Gelderse Vallei Hospital, Ede, The Netherlands.
- Curr Opin Clin Nutr Metab Care. 2015 Mar 1;18(2):179-86.
Purpose Of ReviewMany studies in critically ill patients have addressed enteral or parenteral supplementation of glutamine and antioxidants to counteract assumed deficiencies and induce immune-modulating effects to reduce infections and improve outcome. Older studies showed marked reductions in mortality, infectious morbidity and length of stay. Recent studies no longer show beneficial effects and in contrast even demonstrated increased mortality. This opiniating review focuses on the latest information and the consequences for the use of glutamine and antioxidants in critically ill patients.Recent FindingsPositive effects in systematic reviews and meta-analyses are based on results from older, smaller and mainly single-centre studies. New information has challenged the conditional deficiency hypothesis concerning glutamine in critically ill patients. The recent REDOXS and MetaPlus trials studying the effects of glutamine, selenium and other antioxidants have shown no benefits and increased mortality.SummaryGiven that the first dictum in medicine is to do no harm, we cannot be confident that immune-modulating nutrient supplementation with glutamine and antioxidants is effective and well tolerated for critically ill patients. Until more data are available, it is probably better not to routinely administer glutamine and antioxidants in nonphysiological doses to mechanically ventilated critically ill patients.
Notes
Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
- Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as
*italics*
,_underline_
or**bold**
. - Superscript can be denoted by
<sup>text</sup>
and subscript<sub>text</sub>
. - Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines
1. 2. 3.
, hyphens-
or asterisks*
. - Links can be included with:
[my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
- Images can be included with:
![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
- For footnotes use
[^1](This is a footnote.)
inline. - Or use an inline reference
[^1]
to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document[^1]: This is a long footnote.
.