Background and Aims:
 Introduction: Gut leakage, typical of aging, is thought to be associated to a number of outcomes, including cognitive decline and mood disorders. In turn, glutamine is essential to the maintenance of tight junction of the enterocytes. We hypothesize that glutamine supplementation can reduce the gut leakage in elders, reducing, consequently, the systemic inflammation and slowing down the cognitive decline and mood disorders.

 

Aims: to identify the effect of glutamine supplementation on systemic inflammation, cognitive status and depressive symptoms in apparently healthy elderly.

 

Methods:
Methods: Double-blind RCT (REBEC; RBR-6qr9xx), six months intervention. Forty-nine elders (60+ years old, both genders), assigned into two groups, according to supplementation (both receiving 12g substance/day): glutamine or placebo. Before and after the supplementation protocol, we analysed: -cognitive status (by Mini-mental status examination; MMSE); presence of depressive symptoms (by geriatric depression scale, GDS-15); biomarkers of pro- and anti-inflammatory status (TNF-a, IL-6 and IL-10). We investigated the modification in MMSE and GDS-15 according to groups (chi-square), and performed logistic binomial multiple regressions, investigating inflammatory status, age and sex as covariables (SPSS Software®).

Results:
Results: We did not find differences between differences in MMSE and GDS-15, either in time or groups (X2 to MMSE=0,600; p=0.44; X2 to GDS-15= 0,159; p=0,69. The regression models did not point any significant effect of inflammation, age or sex (R2 (Cox& Snell) to MMSE= 0,176; and = 0,083 to GDS-15.

Conclusions:
Conclusions: Our results pointed that apparently healthy elders did not improve either their cognitive or mood status, as well as inflammatory status, with glutamine supplementation.

GLUTAMINE SUPPLEMENTATION ON SYSTEMIC INFLAMMATION, MOOD AND COGNITIVE STATUS IN ELDERS: A SECONDARY ANALYSIS FROM A RANDOMIZED CLINICAL TRIAL (RCT)