Beschreibung:
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Various studies have shown that dietary glutamine can modify the course of an immune response, through altering the release of cytokines. Nutritional supplementation of glutamine may therefore be of advantage to patients, particularly those with compromised immunity. Given that polymorphisms in cytokine genes can also affect cytokine levels, we have undertaken a study to identify whether there was a differential effect of glutamine supplementation in the context of different IL‐2 ‐330 (T/G) and TNF‐α ‐308 (A/G) genotypes. Overall, there was no significant impact of glutamine supplementation on IL2 release. However, analysing low, medium and high expressors independently, there was an effect of high glutamine levels on cytokine release from the low and medium expressors. Likewise, there was no effect of glutamine supplementation on the TNF‐α release, although a tendency to lower cytokine release at high levels of glutamine. Irrespective of the glutamine concentrations, there was no difference in IL2 release between the IL2 ‐330 genotypes; there was an effect of the TNF‐α genotypes, with the AG and GG genotypes showing greater cytokine release than from the AA genotype.</jats:p>