Abstract

Purpose
Intravenous glutamine may decrease complica-tions arising out of infections, hospital length of stay, and mortality in critically ill patients who require parenteral nu-trition (PN). The aim of this study was to evaluate the ef-fects of administration of L-alanyl-L-glutamine on the clin-ical outcome and serum glutamine concentrations in these patients.Methods: In a population of critically ill patients who need PN at least for 5 days due to difficulty with oral/tube feeding, selected patients after inclusion were randomized into two groups: a study group (n=3) supplied with L-alan-yl-L-glutamine administration and a control group (n=6) without it. Patients were supplied with 1.5 g/kg/day of amino acids and 20∼25 kcal/kg/day of energy. The study group received target amount of amino acids (1.5 g/kg/day) including 0.5 g/kg/day of L-alanyl-L-glutamine. The serum glutamine level and clinical outcomes were measured just before and after 4 and 8 days of PN administration.Results: We could not find out any significant differences of hospital stay, death at hospital, PN-induced complica-tions, and serum glutamine concentrations between the two groups. In the study group, the number of deaths and intensive care unit (ICU) length of stay were much higher than the control group.Conclusion: Due to the lack of randomization in this study, the benefits from parenteral glutamine supplement have not been proved. However, it is the first study to measure serum glutamine concentrations of ICU patients in Korea. Further trials are needed to determine the exact effects of parenteral glutamine administration. (JKSPEN 2013;5(2):62-66)

• Keywords: Parenteral, Glutamine concentration, Inten-sive care unit