Effect van MCT inname in gezonde personen

For patients with a disorder of the carnitine cycle or long-chain fatty acid oxidation (lcFAO), a long-chain triglyceride (LCT) restricted diet, enriched with medium-chain triglycerides (MCT), is currently one of the few therapeutic options recommended by physicians. The effect of oral intake and utilization by the human body has been poorly understood and some studies even suggest that MCT is elongated to LCT in the body. Since lcFAO patients are unable to oxidize LCT, this could mean that the diet has no benefit compared to a regular diet. Our study intends to test the uptake and metabolic route of oral MCT in healthy subjects under different circumstances. We will first perform a small pilot with one healthy subject to determine the optimal conditions for the actual study.

In the pilot we found that our research set-up allows accurate measurement of uptake and metabolism of the oral MCT-label. In the pilot study the subject was in resting conditions and fasted. Now we want to proceed with the actual study in which we will investigate effect of exercise and fed condition on the oxidation and/or elongation of the MCT label . The results of the latter will help to determine the usefulness of MCT in the diet of lcFAO patients.

to test if oral medium-chain triglycerides (MCT) is directly oxidized and/ or elongated to long-chain triglycerides (LCT) under the following conditions: fasted/fed

2 testdays

MCT emulsion (liquigen®), tracer: glycerol-tri(octanoate-1,2,3,4-13C4)