ABSTRACT
Experimental and clinical data appear to indicate that Intralipid--an emulsion of soya bean oil, glycerol and egg lecithin--which is usually employed to improve caloric intake of parenteral nutrition regimens, may compromise human host defence mechanisms and therefore expose patients to an increased incidence of infectious diseases. Since from a biochemical point of view it has been suggested that a possible way whereby the somewhat poor reputation of Intralipid--attributable to the liver damage and the persistent lipaemia which attend its use--might be improved is to give supplementary carnitine which acts as a rate-limiting factor in the removal of the fat emulsion from blood, we hypothesized that the addition of carnitine to Intralipid could also result in a improvement of the immune responses both "in vitro" and "in vivo". Our results lend some support to the hypothesis in favour of a metabolic basis for some of the immunosuppressive properties of Intralipid and justify the inclusion of L-carnitine in parenteral nutrition regimens which, by abrogating some co-factor limitation, improves the immune responses of the host.
