Amino acid requirements in children and the elderly population.

The factorial approach is used to measure the dietary indispensable amino acid (IAA) requirements in children, although recent measurements based on the indicator amino acid oxidation (IAAO) method have begun to generate more direct evidence. Difficulties with the factorial method are that it depends on accurate estimates of the maintenance protein requirement, as well as of protein deposition during growth. Also, a value for the efficiency of utilizing dietary protein for deposition has to be selected, based on published Nitrogen (N) balance studies. In the recent 2007 WHO/FAO/UNU report, the amino acid requirement pattern for infants was taken to be similar to the amino acid composition of breast milk. For pre-school and older children, the factorial method gave values for the scoring pattern of protein that were fairly close to the earlier 1985 WHO/FAO/UNU report for children, since growth progressively became a smaller component of the factorial calculation as age progressed. However, given that there are several assumptions in the derivation of factorial estimates, direct experimental measurements of the amino acid requirement are desirable. The IAAO method, as it is non-invasive, as made it possible to measure the IAA requirements in children. Over the last decade, some of the IAA requirements have been determined by using the IAAO method in healthy school age children; however, the data on IAA requirements in developing country populations are still being conducted. In the elderly, there are not enough data to make a separate recommendation for IAA requirements from that of adults.