Bone marrow transplantation (BMT) is a therapy used for hematologic malignancies and solid tumors. Associated chemotherapy and radiotherapy to which these patients are submitted induce secondary effects, with a high metabolic stress. Glutamine is considered a conditionally essential amino acid, and has been shown effective in severe catabolic states. The aim of the study was to assess the effect of parenteral nutrition (PN) therapy supplemented with glutamine on duration of nutritional support in a group of patients with BMT. We have also analyzed associated complications, the nutritional status, the clinical course at 6 months, differences as to type of transplantation, and oral ingestion capability. This is a phase IV, randomized, double blind, and parallel clinical trial, done at a single center. The study was performed on 49 patients, 29% male and 71% female patients, with ages between 21-63 years, distributed in 3 diagnostic groups (leukemia, lymphoma, and solid tumors), and admitted to the Hematology Department of our Hospital. Fifty percent of the patients in each group have received PN supplemented with glutamine (0.4 g/kg/day of L-alanine-L-glutamine), and the other 50% have received standard PN.
Results: we have not found significant differences nor at the beginning nor at the end of the study between both groups with regards to studied variables.
Conclusions: PN is and effective therapy for maintenance of the nutritional status in patients submitted to a therapy with a, highly catabolic effect such as BMT. Although we have not been able to show the efficacy of glutamine supplementation in this study with the used dose, it does have been effective in other reports.