A new study demonstrates that the amino acid glutamine, found in many foods and dietary supplements, may offer an alternative to antibiotics to treat stomach ulcers.
That's because glutamine may help offset gastric damage resulting from Helicobacter pylori infection, the bacteria discovered nearly 20 years ago as the culprit causing stomach ulcers.
The discovery led to the use of antibiotics as the primary therapy combat the H. pylori infection, which affects approximately 6 percent of the world population and is also a primary cause of stomach cancer. But today the bacteria is growing increasingly resistant to antibiotics.
But the new study about glutamine is providing solace to medical officials. Scientists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology led the study, reported in the May issue of the Journal of Nutrition.
"Our findings suggest that extra glutamine in the diet could protect against gastric damage caused by H. pylori," says senior author Susan Hagen, associate research director in medical center's surgery department and associate surgery professor at Harvard Medical School. "Gastric damage develops when the bacteria weakens the stomach's protective mucous coating, damages cells and elicits a robust immune response that is ineffective at ridding the infection."
Eventually, she notes, years of infection result in a combination of persistent gastritis, cell damage, and an environment conducive to cancer development.
Glutamine is a nonessential amino acid naturally found in certain foods, including beef, chicken, fish, eggs, dairy products, and some fruits and vegetables. L-glutamine, the biologically active isomer of glutamine, is used widely as a dietary supplement by body builders to increase muscle mass.
Hagen and her co-authors previously had shown that glutamine protects against cell death from H. pylori-produced ammonia.
"Our work demonstrated that the damaging effects of ammonia on gastric cells could be reversed completely by the administration of L-glutamine," Hagen says. "The amino acid stimulated ammonia detoxification in the stomach, as it does in the liver, so that the effective concentration of ammonia was reduced, thereby blocking cell damage."
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