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Biomedical subjects

U Suchner

Publications and source records attributed to U Suchner.

22 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMed1990

Growth hormone and pulmonary disease. Metabolic effects in patients receiving parenteral nutrition.

Six severely malnourished patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease were maintained for 3 days with infusions of 5% dextrose in water followed by 12 days of eucaloric total parenteral nutrition. On days 8 through 11, they received 30 micrograms/d of growth hormone and twice this amount on days 11 through 15. Growth hormone had no significant effects on the plasma concentration of glucose, cortisol, or glucagon but caused a 50% increase in insulin and a 250% increase in somatomedin C concentrations. A positive nitrogen balance of 2 g/d due to growth hormone was probably mediated by insulin. Growth hormone-induced increases in energy expenditure and fat oxidation and decrease in glucose oxidation cannot be accounted for by insulin. The ability of growth hormone to improve nitrogen balance may be particularly important for malnourished patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease who, because of their pulmonary insufficiency, are intolerant of excess nutrients.

Aged↗
PubMed1984

Ribose intervention in the cardiac pentose phosphate pathway is not species-specific.

Ribose is cardioprotective in the rat in a variety of pathophysiological conditions. The metabolic basis for this effect is the low capacity of the oxidative pentose phosphate pathway in the myocardium. Ribose bypasses this pathway, elevates the available pool of 5-phosphoribosyl-l-pyrophosphate, and thus stimulates the biosynthesis of adenine nucleotides. In this study reported here the activity of glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase, the first and rate-limiting enzyme of the oxidative pentose phosphate shunt, was very low in the human heart and was of the same order of magnitude in the myocardium of various animal species. Furthermore, ribose had a similar stimulating effect on myocardial adenine nucleotide biosynthesis in the guinea pig, in which hemodynamic parameters are different from those in the rat. It is concluded that the metabolic basis for the effectiveness of ribose is similar in all species investigated.

Adenine Nucleotides↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Should immunonutrition become routine in critically ill patients? A systematic review of the evidence.

CONTEXT: Several nutrients have been shown to influence immunologic and inflammatory responses in humans. Whether these effects translate into an improvement in clinical outcomes in critically ill patients remains unclear. OBJECTIVE: To examine the relationship between enteral nutrition supplemented with immune-enhancing nutrients and infectious complications and mortality rates in critically ill patients. DATA SOURCES: The databases of MEDLINE, EMBASE, Biosis, and CINAHL were searched for articles published from 1990 to 2000. Additional data sources included the Cochrane Controlled Trials Register from 1990 to 2000, personal files, abstract proceedings, and relevant reference lists of articles identified by database review. STUDY SELECTION: A total of 326 titles, abstracts, and articles were reviewed. Primary studies were included if they were randomized trials of critically ill or surgical patients that evaluated the effect of enteral nutrition supplemented with some combination of arginine, glutamine, nucleotides, and omega-3 fatty acids on infectious complication and mortality rates compared with standard enteral nutrition, and included clinically important outcomes, such as mortality. DATA EXTRACTION: Methodological quality of individual studies was scored and necessary data were abstracted in duplicate and independently. DATA SYNTHESIS: Twenty-two randomized trials with a total of 2419 patients compared the use of immunonutrition with standard enteral nutrition in surgical and critically ill patients. With respect to mortality, immunonutrition was associated with a pooled risk ratio (RR) of 1.10 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.93-1.31). Immunonutrition was associated with lower infectious complications (RR, 0.66; 95% CI, 0.54-0.80). Since there was significant heterogeneity across studies, we examined several a priori subgroup analyses. We found that studies using commercial formulas with high arginine content were associated with a significant reduction in infectious complications and a trend toward a lower mortality rate compared with other immune-enhancing diets. Studies of surgical patients were associated with a significant reduction in infectious complication rates compared with studies of critically ill patients. In studies of critically ill patients, studies with a high-quality score were associated with increased mortality and a significant reduction in infectious complication rates compared with studies with a low-quality score. CONCLUSION: Immunonutrition may decrease infectious complication rates but it is not associated with an overall mortality advantage. However, the treatment effect varies depending on the intervention, the patient population, and the methodological quality of the study.

Arginine↗