The use of elemental diets during cancer therapy (review).

The intestinal mucosa depends upon luminal contents for part of its own supply of nutrients. Such nutrients are provided in a rapidly available state by elemental diets composed of chemically defined products containing nutrients in their simplest forms, e.g. amino acids, oligopeptides, essential fatty acids, triglycerides and simple sugars. These diets help to maintain the integrity of the intestinal mucosa under conditions such as abdominal irradiation and cancer chemotherapy which greatly impair the terminal digestion of nutrients in the intestinal brush border. The elemental diets also diminish the concentration of potentially injurious constituents of the intestinal juice, such as pancreatic proteases and bile salts, which play an important role in the intestinal complications of cancer therapy.