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Nutritional and metabolic modulation in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease management

CORRESPONDENCE: A.M.W.J. Schols, Department of Respiratory Medicine, University Hospital Maastricht, P.O. Box 5800, 6202, AZ Maastricht. Fax: 31 433875051. E-mail: a.schols@pul.unimaas.nl

Keywords: body weight, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, metabolism, muscle, nutrition

Received: June 30, 2003
Accepted June 30, 2003

In this paper the perspective for nutritional modulation of systemic impairment in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is discussed. Progressive weight loss is characterised by disease-specific elevated energy requirements unbalanced by dietary intake. Weight gain per se can be achieved by caloric supplementation while future studies may prove efficacy of amino acid modulation to stimulate protein synthesis and enhance muscle anabolism.

Disproportionate muscle wasting resembles the cachexia syndrome as described in other chronic wasting diseases (cancer, chronic heart failure, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS)). There is yet no adequate nutritional strategy available to treat cachexia in COPD. Muscle substrate metabolism has hardly been investigated, but the few data available point towards a decreased fat oxidative capacity that may show similarities with the "metabolic syndrome" as described in type II diabetes and obesity and could theoretically benefit from polyunsaturated fatty acid modulation.

To adequately target the different therapeutic options, clearly more clinical (intervention) studies are needed in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients that are adequately characterised by local and systemic impairment and in which molecular and metabolic markers are linked to functional outcome.

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