Characteristics of the Amino Acid Profile in Children With Impaired Motor Activity of the Gastrointestinal Tract

Abstract

Purpose.To identify the characteristics of the amino acid profile in children with various disturbances of the motor activity of the gastrointestinal tract. We examined 100 patients treated at the diagnostic department of the Children’s Republican Clinical Hospital of Tatarstan. The main group consisted of 80 patients, 40 of whom were diagnosed with functional constipation, and 40 patients were diagnosed with endoscopically verified gastroesophageal reflux disease. The control group consisted of 20 somatically healthy children with no signs of pathology of the gastrointestinal tract. We determined the content of amino acids in dry blood stains using liquid tandem chromatography-mass spectrometry on Agilent Technologies 6410 Triple Quad LC/MC (USA). We performed statistical analysis of the results using GraphPad InStat (version 3.05; 2000) and Statistica 10.0.Results.We found differences in the amino acid composition of blood of the patients with impaired motor activity of the digestive tract as compared to healthy children. The level of leucine was increased to the greatest extent in the study group. The revealed changes correlated with the severity of the disease.Conclusions. Disorders in the motor activity of the digestive organs are accompanied by changes in the amino acid profile that are associated with the severity of functional constipation and gastroesophageal reflux disease. Some amino acids, in particular leucine and arginine, can be used to diagnose secondary mitochondrial dysfunction in pediatric gastroenterology along with conventional biochemical and chromatomass-spectrometric markers.