Pre-op supplement 'fights infections'

The supplement could cut hospital stays

Heart bypass patients given nutritional supplements before their operations may have a better chance of beating dangerous infections.

It is believed that the supplement helps boost the immune system.

An experiment in a Dutch hospital found that those given the supplement were less likely to get an infection.

Many thousands of people have major surgery in the UK every year - and in a large number of cases, their underlying illness makes them vulnerable to infection.

Picking up post-operative infections can both endanger their recovery, and cost the NHS huge sums of money as they stay longer in hospital to overcome them.

Anything that could reduce the large number of hospital infections should definitely be investigated

Spokesman, British Nutrition Foundation

It is estimated that 5,000 people die every year after picking up infections in hospital - and the cost to the NHS is more than £1bn.

The supplement used by the Dutch doctors had well-known components - a mixture of Omega-3 fatty acids found in oily fish, L-arginine, an amino acid found in high-protein foods, and yeast RNA, another established immune system boosting supplement.

Less hospital time

Patients were given the supplement for five days prior to their operations.

Blood tests taken from both the group of patients given the supplements, and a control group given none of the "active" ingredients, revealed that one indicator of immune function was much better in the treated group.

Among the 23 patients in the treated group, only four got one or more infections - among the 22 in the normal group, a total of 12 got infection.

Nine of these infections were potentially dangerous pneumonia.

The supplement group on average left hospital two days earlier than the other heart patients.

The study authors, writing in The Lancet, said they expected that this would be the case in larger groups of patients as well.

Other studies have already suggested the worth of the supplements for patients facing other types of infection.

A spokesman for the British Nutrition Foundation said that the individual ingredients of the Dutch supplement were all available to buy over the counter.

She said: "These have been pretty well-tested, so there are unlikely to be any adverse effects for these patients.

"Anything that could reduce the large number of hospital infections should definitely be investigated.

"However, there probably needs to be more work done on this before it is used more widely."