The prevalence of colorectal cancer (CRC) is on a steady rise over the years, with the World Health Organization (WHO) reporting CRC as the fourth leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide. While treatment modalities may differ in accordance to the staging and severity of the disease itself, chemotherapy is almost unavoidable in most cases. Though effective in its mode of action, chemotherapy is commonly associated with undesirable side effects that negatively affects the patient in terms of quality of life, and in some cases may actually interfere with their treatment regimens, thus escalating to poor prognosis. Gastrointestinal disturbances is a major side effect of chemotherapy and in CRC, gastrointestinal disturbances may be further aggravated and grave in nature mainly due to the affected site, being the gastrointestinal tract. The use of complementary therapies as adjuncts to alleviate the side effects of chemotherapy in CRC patients is gaining prominence with dietary supplements being the most commonly employed adjunct. Some of the frequently used dietary supplements for CRC patients are probiotics, omega-3 fatty acid and glutamine. The successful crosstalk between these dietary supplements with important metabolic pathways is crucial in the alleviation of chemotherapy side effects.
The addition of glutamine to parenteral nutrition (PN) in neonates has not shown significant benefits as compared to adults thus far. This study aimed to determine the potential benefits of the addition of glutamine to neonatal PN in a tertiary hospital in a middle-income country.
Hyperglycemia and insulin resistance are common in many critically ill patients. Hyperglycemia increases the production of reactive oxygen species in cells, stimulates the production of the potent proinflammatory cytokines IL-8 and TNF-alpha, and enhances the expression of haem oxygenase-1, an inducible stress protein. It has been shown that administration of insulin and the semi-essential amino acid glutamine have been beneficial to the septic patient. The aim of our study is to test whether these two molecules, glutamine and insulin used in combination attenuate the proinflammatory responses in endothelial cells which have been triggered by hyperglycaemia. Our results demonstrate that a combination of insulin and glutamine are significantly more effective in reducing the expression of IL-8, TNF-alpha and HO-1 than insulin or glutamine alone.