Nutritional or therapeutic compositions to increase bodily glutathione levels

Abstract

Nutritional or therapeutic compositions containing glutamic acid, cystine, glycine and a selenium precursor and methods for their utilization to increase glutathione synthesis and thereby enhance the immune system are described.

Description

[0001]Notice: More than one reissue application has been filed for the reissue of U.S. Pat. No. 6,592,908. The reissue applications are application Ser. Nos. 11 / 181,001 (present application), filed on Jul. 13, 2005, and 11 / 371,804, filed on Mar. 9, 2006, which is a divisional reissue of U.S. Pat. No. 6,592,908.FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0002]This invention relates to nutritional or therapeutic compositions useful for treating mammals to increase their body content of glutathione above a pretreatment level thereby to enhance the immune activity of the treated mammal. More specifically, it relates to compositions containing a selenium compound together with a glutathione precursor which is a mixture of glutamic acid, cystine and glycine.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0003]Glutathione is a tripeptide and a major reducing agent in the mammalian body. Its chemical structure is: or, more simplyGLU-CYS-GLY[0004]Its chemical name is glutamyl-cysteinyl-glycine.[0005]Like many other small peptides i...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0018]The compositions will be utilized to increase the formation of glutathione and thus to enhance the immune activity of a mammal in need of such treatment. The effect of the treatment is such that after the treatment, the mammal will be more resistant to microbial infection or other trauma adversely affecting immune activity than before such treatment.

[0019]Because of their ability to increase production of glutathione, the compositions are useful to treat a wide variety of diseases associated with the presence of excess free radical or reactive oxygen or nitrogen species. These include, for example, cancer, Alzheimer's disease, arteriosclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases, cachexia, coronary artery disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, AIDS and others as will be apparent to the skilled artisan.

Problems solved by technology

It is known that insufficient levels of glutathione may result in the onset of numerous diseases.

Even if some of the tripeptide gets through the gastrointestinal wall intact, it is questionable whether it can be absorbed as such into the individual cell, rather than being synthesized intracellularly.

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