Rhoads lecture--1988. Bulk or bounce--the object of nutritional support

Wasting of muscle and a negative nitrogen balance are obvious effects of malnutrition, and have led to the use of anthropometric measurements and nitrogen balance for its assessment. A positive nitrogen balance and an increase in limb muscle circumference are believed to be solid indices of the beneficial effects of nutritional support. In experiments with growing rats and in young children, nitrogen retention and growth are recognized to be the desirable effects of optimal nutritional intake. This concept has been applied to malnourished adult humans (nongrowing) who have been considered potentially able to "regrow" the lost tissue. Although it is true that patients receiving long-term (greater than 6 months) home total parenteral nutrition (TPN), gain body weight and nitrogen over many months and years of observation, these processes are not seen during shorter (less than 40 days) periods of nutritional intervention given in hospital. Despite adequate intakes of nitrogen and calories, little or no significant increase in total body nitrogen is seen in a variety of patients receiving TPN in hospital over several weeks, but nutritional support does appear to improve outcome in the form of reduced complications after a period of support so short that body composition is barely altered. For example, Young and Hill showed that although amino acids and amino acids plus calories both resulted in equivalent sparing of body nitrogen, the latter was associated with quicker wound healing and fewer complications. Thus, the outcome and body composition data suggest that reversal of the adverse effects of malnutrition is not based on improvement of the traditional parameters of nutrition, such as gain in body nitrogen, or a demonstrable increase in muscle mass, or in plasma proteins. On the basis of the foregoing evidence, there are grounds for suspecting that functional abnormalities in adult humans may not be the result of simple loss of lean tissue and therefore may recover before such lean tissue is regained. This hypothesis is supported by the observation of Klidjian et al who showed that muscle force is a good measure of outcome. One of the major organ systems of the human body is the musculoskeletal system, and therefore it would seem important to determine the effect of malnutrition on that system. Previous studies of muscle function have been largely related to the examination of fatigue, myopathy, and endocrine-metabolic abnormalities. Subsequently we undertook initial studies of muscle function in very malnourished patients as outlined below.