| The long term cancer-free survival of pediatric cancer patients has significantly increased during the past decades due to more intensive chemotherapy treatment regimens. However, more intensive treatment has also resulted in serious morbidity and even mortality. One of the possible interventions to decrease morbidity and mortality is optimal nutritional support. One side effect that is possibly related to decreased nutritional state is chemotherapy induced gastro-intestinal mucositis. This is a condition in which the normal growth of the epithelium is disturbed. As a result of the mucositis, the mucosal barrier is disrupted and might become an important route for micro-organisms and/or its toxins to invade the host. Furthermore, a disturbed mucosa may lead to malabsorption of nutrients, which may lead to a decreased nutritional status of the patient. Normally, the gastro-intestinal epithelium gets much from its nutrients from the lumen of the intestine, necessary for recovery of severe mucositis. Therefore, decreased digestion and absorption of nutrients may delay the recovery of the gut. When the digestive function of the gut will be known, an optimal feeding regimen for children with chemotherapy induced mucositis can developed. Until now, studies on chemotherapy-induced mucositis have analyzed and described the morphology of the affected small intestine and RNA and protein levels of some enzymes necessary for digestion and absorption of nutrients. However, we'd like to study the digestive and absorptive function of the gut with gastro-intestinal mucositis functionally. This will be done using a rat model of chemotherapy induced gastro-intestinal mucositis proven to be useful to study the functional consequences of chemotherapy induced gastro-intestinal mucositis. |
