ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Nutr.
Sec. Clinical Nutrition
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnut.2025.1682020
Comparison of Standard Polymer Formula versus Short Peptide Formula in Sepsis Patients with Acute Gastrointestinal Injury
Provisionally accepted
- Bethune First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, China
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Background: To investigate the selection of enteral nutrition (EN) formulas for critically ill sepsis patients with acute gastrointestinal injury (AGI) grade I-II. Methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort study on critically ill sepsis patients with AGI grades I-II. The primary outcomes were EN caloric adequacy on day 7, calories and protein gain from EN within 3–7 days, and the incidence of gastric retention and diarrhea after EN administration. We performed a subgroup analysis based on whether patients initiated EN within 48 hours. Results: In the early EN subgroup, caloric adequacy, calories and protein gain of EN on day 7 of the short-peptide group was higher than that of the standard-polymeric group (59.1% vs. 27.3%, p=0.001; 624[0,936] vs. 0[-360,480], p=0.001; 24[0,38] vs. 0[-14.4,19.2], p=0.003, respectively), and the incidence of gastric retention (18.2% vs. 36.4%, p=0.03) and diarrhea (9.1% vs. 25.5%, p=0.02) were lower in the short-peptide group than in the standard-polymeric group. However, in the delayed EN subgroup, the caloric adequacy of EN on day 7 of the short-peptide group was lower than that of the standard-polymeric group (28.6% vs. 43.5%, p=0.02), calories and protein gain from EN were lower in the short-peptide group than in the standard-polymeric group (960[480,1200] vs. 1080[720,1440], p=0.04; 38.4[19.2,50.4] vs. 43.2[28.8,57.6], p=0.04, respectively). Conclusion: In sepsis patients with AGI grades I-II, short-peptide formulas may be considered for early EN initiation (≤ 48h), while standard-polymer formulas may be an option for late EN initiation (> 48h). Exploratory results need to be interpreted with caution and await verification of these findings through high-quality research.
Keywords: Sepsis, Enteral Nutrition, Acute gastrointestinal injury, standard-polymeric formulas, short-peptide formulas
Received: 08 Aug 2025; Accepted: 02 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Li, Zhang and Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Dong Zhang, zhangdong@jlu.edu.cn
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