Long-Term Use of Mixed-Oil Lipid Emulsion in Adult Home Parenteral Nutrition Patients: A Case Series

Background Despite providing significant benefits, home parenteral nutrition (HPN) can be associated with complications such as infections, intestinal failure-associated liver disease, and metabolic abnormalities. Soybean oil (SO)-based intravenous lipid emulsion (ILE) has been noted to contribute to some of these complications, leading to the development of alternative sources of ILE. Mixed-oil (MO) ILE has recently been approved for use in adults with short-term studies revealing a benefit over SO ILE. Currently there is a paucity of data regarding long-term use in the HPN population. Methods Results The current study reports our experience with MO ILE in 9 HPN patients. A total of 9 patients (3 women and 6 men) with average age of 48.1 +/- 15.1 years and a median HPN use of 9.9 years (9.0 months-30.7 years) were transitioned from SO ILE to MO ILE as a result of intolerance. The 9 patients tolerated MO ILE well for 140.7 +/- 29.7 days. The percentage of calories provided through ILE increased from 7.6 +/- 6.5% to 18.4 +/- 8.2% (P = .003), whereas the dextrose decreased from 66.9 +/- 8.4% to 56.9 +/- 5.5% (P = .0007). Although statistical significance was not reached, there was a trend toward improvement in alkaline phosphatase from 138.0 (52-884) to 106 (47-512; P = .09). Conclusion MO ILE was well tolerated in this small cohort and led to improvement in the macronutrient composition of HPN while providing a trend toward improvement in liver studies. These results are promising; however, additional randomized control trials are needed to delineate the true benefit.