Views: 2 Author: Site Editor Publish Time: 2023-06-13 Origin: Site
Xanthan gum is a microbial high molecular weight extracellular polysaccharide produced by Xanthomonas campestris with high stability, excellent biocompatibility and good rheology, etc. It has been found to have significant effects in reducing blood glucose peaks, promoting lipid metabolism and transporting beneficial bacteria, and is expected to reduce the occurrence of complications such as enteral nutrition diarrhea, constipation and hyperglycemia.
Enteral nutrition is a form of nutritional support that provides metabolically required nutrients and various other nutrients via the gastrointestinal tract. In recent years, the role of enteral nutrition has received increasing attention. It has been found that enteral nutrition not only enables patients to receive nutritional supplements, but also protects the function of intestinal mucosa, adjusts the intestinal lumen environment and maintains the intestinal mucosal barrier. However, complications such as diarrhea, constipation and hyperglycemia occur during the process of enteral nutrition. Xanthan gum is a microbial high molecular weight extracellular polysaccharide produced by Xanthomonas campestris and is now commonly used as an additive in various industrial applications, with high stability, excellent biocompatibility and good rheology. These properties make xanthan gum promising to reduce the occurrence of enteral nutrition complications.
Good water solubility
Excellent biocompatibility
Excellent rheological properties
Outstanding stability
Emulsifying properties
In recent years, with the continuous research, xanthan gum has been found to have great potential not only in medical fields such as protecting wounds, transporting drugs, sealing intestinal fistulas and treating arthritis, but also it has shown remarkable effects in lowering blood glucose peaks, promoting lipid metabolism and transporting beneficial bacteria. This suggests that it has a wide range of promising applications in the field of enteral nutrition.
Xanthan gum significantly suppressed postprandial glucose spikes. It was found that healthy men consuming juice with xanthan gum decreased their incremental glucose spikes compared to those consuming juice without xanthan gum, and no difference in appetite was found between the two groups of healthy men after 2 weeks of consumption. The enteral nutrition group with xanthan gum was reported to have 20% lower blood glucose 20 min after a meal than the control group. Consumption of xanthan gum-added rice suppressed blood glucose levels, which can inhibit glucose absorption by inhibiting carbohydrate diffusion in the intestinal lumen, suggesting that this measure may also be effective in the treatment of diabetes. The above provides a new idea for designing enteral nutrition for diabetic patients.
The ability of xanthan gum to lower plasma cholesterol is due to several different mechanisms. Chief among them is its interference with the bile acid cycle, increasing the loss of bile acids, which leads to increased synthesis of bile acids in the liver and thus accelerates the oxidation of cholesterol. Xanthan gum was found to bind bile acids through its suitable polar and hydrophobic groups, allowing for increased bile acid excretion, while the helical structure and gel-forming properties of the viscous polysaccharide also lead to encapsulation of bile acids, thus interfering with their absorption in the intestine. Fasting is associated with a decrease in primary bile acid synthesis and a decrease in gastrointestinal demand for bile acids during artificial nutrition, which feeds back to control the decrease in bile acid synthesis. It was found that the oil-in-water emulsion formed by xanthan gum has an excellent inhibitory effect on lipid oxidation, which enhances the oxidative stability of nutrient solutions containing unsaturated fatty acids. This shows that the addition of xanthan gum to enteral nutrition has positive implications for promoting lipid metabolism.
Xanthan gum is an effective and inexpensive encapsulation material. Drug release from the xanthan gum matrix occurs in two phases, the first phase is a Fick diffusion process and the second phase is mainly due to the erosion or dissolution of the highly hydrophilic xanthan gum, which strongly depends on the ionic strength of the dissolution medium. It was found that xanthan gum capsules have a protective effect on probiotic bacteria from gastric acid and low pH environments, which in turn helps to deliver live bacteria to the host's gastrointestinal tract. The use of xanthan gum as microspheres and the combination of Marsalazine with probiotics such as Lactobacillus acidophilus was reported to achieve efficient and cost-effective targeting in the colon with significantly better results than delayed release techniques using synthetic polymers as coating materials.
Xanthan gum has a curly backbone and tight side chain groups. This structure resists bacterial penetration, making it difficult to be fermented by bacteria in the colon and retaining water. Xanthan gum has been found to be a highly effective laxative, with an average increase in stool production of about 50 g/d at a dose of 15 g/d. The increase in mass is not only due to an increase in water, but also a significant increase in dry weight, and xanthan gum can cause a significant increase in the number of bowel movements and affect the evacuation time of the bowel contents. This is of great importance for patients after gastrointestinal surgery and for elderly patients with constipation due to various reasons.
Xanthan gum has excellent rheological properties and is a very effective thickener and stabilizer, commonly used in food products to improve their quality. At low concentrations, it forms a viscous solution that is not affected by changes in temperature, pH or salt concentration, and has a higher and more stable viscosity than other polysaccharide solutions. Several studies have reported that the addition of xanthan gum (0.2% ~ 0.6% v/w) can improve the quality and sensory properties of food products.
Xanthan gum has excellent biocompatibility and has been widely used in food processing, but its application in human disease states lacks long-term, multicenter randomized controlled clinical trials. In recent years, xanthan gum has been studied in tissue engineering and food processing, but its specific mechanism of action still needs further investigation. Although the value of xanthan gum in enteral nutrition has been found, the rational application of xanthan gum in enteral nutrition needs to be further investigated.
Although there are still problems to be solved in the application of xanthan gum in enteral nutrition, it is foreseeable that with further research on xanthan gum, its clinical application will be more clear and its application fields will be more extensive, so that it can be useful not only in the treatment of necrotizing colitis, gastroesophageal reflux and parenteral fistula, but also in the formulation of enteral nutrition solution.
