Serum fatty acid profile of elderly tube-fed men in a nursing home.

Severely dependent tube-fed elderly men with dementia in this VA nursing home are nourished exclusively with Isocal, which provides only four fatty acids in amounts over 1% of the total (palmitic, oleic, linoleic, and alpha-linolenic). It has not been proven that the frail elderly can efficiently convert linoleic to arachidonic acid, and alpha-linolenic to eicosapentanoic and docosahexaenoic acids. Therefore, we compared the serum profile of fatty acids in six of the tube-fed elderly men with the profile of six healthy young men eating mixed foods ad lib. Expressed as percent of total fatty acids, arachidonic, eicosapentanoic and docosahexaenoic acids did not differ significantly between the two groups. The data show that linoleic and alpha-linolenic acids satisfy the requirements for omega 6 and omega 3 fatty acids, respectively, in severely impaired elderly men.