Kurzfassung

Patients with malignancies have a high risk for malnutrition. The correction of the nutritional status by adequate energetic and caloric supply, in accordance to the individual needs, is a central task of the guideline – based nutritional intervention, with the targets of preventing further weight loss, to improve therapy tolerance, to reduce therapy-associated side effects and to improve quality of life. Malignancies and their therapy lead to important biochemical and physiologic alterations...Patients with malignancies have a high risk for malnutrition. The correction of the nutritional status by adequate energetic and caloric supply, in accordance to the individual needs, is a central task of the guideline – based nutritional intervention, with the targets of preventing further weight loss, to improve therapy tolerance, to reduce therapy-associated side effects and to improve quality of life. Malignancies and their therapy lead to important biochemical and physiologic alterations and to a reduction in quality of life. The tumor-associated malnutrition often progresses to tumor cachexia, through complex interactions between proinflammatory cytokines and increased oxidative stress. An early, individually adapted nutritional intervention with dietary counseling and oral, enteral or parenteral supplementation of energetic supply is an obligate accompanying measure to surgery, chemotherapy and / or radiation. The mechanisms by which therapy tolerance, quality of life and survival improve, while the postoperative complication rate decreases are not entirely explained by the increase in weight and muscle mass and are insufficiently investigated. Possible changes associated with malnutrition and nutritional intervention can be related to processes of DNA-damage and –repair. Based on the multiple suggestive data from literature, yet without clarifying evidence, we aim to investigate DNA-damage and –repair as well as metabolic alterations in patients with gastrointestinal tumors and malnutrition. We also plan to assess the impact of nutritional intervention on DNA-damage and –repair. This will be performed by measuring the highly sensitive DNA-damage-response marker gamma-H2AX in lymphocytes of patients, together with assessment of the ROS- and inflammatory status of patients. We hypothesize that malnutrition leads to increased oxidative stress and DNA-damage in healthy cells and that an individually tailored nutritional intervention can reduce oxidative stress and DNA-damage as well as increase the capacity of DNA-repair in healthy cells.
Naturwiss. Doktorand: L. Bergholz, Med. Doktorand: E. Dikeoulia» weiterlesen» einklappen