Khaled Ali Alawaini - April 2

The effects of total parenteral nutrition on glucose metabolism in Yucatan miniature pigs

Total parenteral nutrition is a life-saving intravenous feeding which provides nutritional requirements to patients who cannot tolerate oral feeding. However, infants exposed to long term use of TPN are at high risk for liver diseases such as fatty liver. Moreover, other chronic diseases, such as cardiovascular diseases or diabetes mellitus, may also be associated with long term use of TPN. The essential amino acid methionine plays a major role in growth, protein synthesis and methylation reactions, yet may be limiting in TPN solutions. However, supplementation of methionine to TPN increases homocysteine concentration, a known risk factor for cardiovascular diseases. Some novel TPN supplements such as creatine and betaine may enhance methionine without increasing homocysteine concentrations. Therefore, our major objectives in this study is to determine if betaine and creatine supplementations to TPN will prevent early development of fatty liver and chronic diseases.