Gastric retention of acidic enteral formula in rats.

Abstract

The amount of enteral formula retained in the stomach is thought to be associated with the incidence of gastroesophageal reflux. In this study, we compared the gastric emptying of an acidic polymeric formula with that of a neutral polymeric formula in rats.
We found that gastric emptying of solid content was faster with the acidic polymeric formula than that of the neutral polymeric formula. No difference was observed in the gastric emptying of soluble digesta marker between the neutral and acidic formulae. On the other hand, the gastric emptying of insoluble digesta marker was faster with the acidic formula than with the neutral formula. When the enteral formula was digested with artificial gastric juice, the neutral formula curded with a decrease in the pH, but no such change was observed in the acidic formula.
These results suggest that the gastric emptying of acidic formulae is faster than that of neutral formulae, possibly because of no intragastric curd formation.