Context: Current best evidence is in favour of early institution of enteral feeding in acute severe pancreatitis with promising results from trials in immunonutrition on other patient groups.
Objective: To identify which groups of patients and products are associated with benefit, we investigated immunonutrition in patients with predicted acute severe pancreatitis.
Design: A randomised trial of a study feed containing glutamine, arginine, tributyrin and antioxidants versus an isocaloric isonitrogenous control feed was undertaken.
Patients: Thirty-one patients with a diagnosis of acute pancreatitis predicted to develop severe disease: 15 study feeds and 16 control feeds.
Interventions: Enteral feeding via nasojejunal tube for 3 days. If patients required further feeding the study was continued up to 15 days.
Main outcome measures: Reduction in C-reactive protein (CRP) by 40 mg/L after 3 days of enteral feeding was the primary endpoint. Carboxypeptidase B activation peptide (CAPAP) levels were taken at regular intervals.
Results: After 3 days of feeding, in the study group 2/15 (13%) of patients had reduced their CRP by 40 mg/L or more. In the control group 6/16 (38%) of patients had reduced their CRP by this amount. This difference was found to be near the statistical significant limit (P=0.220).
Conclusions: The cause of the unexpectedly higher CRP values in the study group is unclear. The rise in CRP was without a commensurate rise in CAPAP or outcome measures so there was no evidence that this represented pancreatic necrosis. The contrast between the CRP and CAPAP results is of interest and we believe that specific pancreatic indices such as CAPAP should be considered in larger future studies.