薬理と治療

Abstract

In recent years, the effects of non-essential amino acid, glutamine, on immune system have been focused and were found to modulate inflammatory response, gut function and improve postoperative outcome. In this review article, the effects of glutamine, given either parenteral or enteral route, to man(normal and patients with cancer), farm animals(cow and pigs with pancreatitis) and rodents (rats and mice)are looked over. In most cases, glutamine showed an improvement of survival rate, minimized infectious complications, costs and hospital-length of stay. In addition, glutamine suppressed the side effect induced by anti-cancer drugs(5-FU, doxorubicin). As one of the mechanism by which glutamine enhances immune response was suggested to be due to the activation of lymphocyte and macrophage. In vitro study, it was shown that glutamine activates lymphocyte and macrophage in a dose-related manner. Therefore, even in in vivo study, a dose-response activity of glutamine was expected. Most of the papers consist of the effect of glutamine at one dose. Thus, even if the effect of glutamine at one dose should be negative, the increase in dose of glutamine appears to show positive results. As a whole, it was confirmed that glutamine has a potentiative activity on immune response in vivo studies as well as in vitro studies.