Effects of glutamine supplementation on exercise: systematic review

The glutamine is the amino acid more abundant in skeletal muscle and its use is essential for various body cells. Due too its plasma and tissue concentration are decreased after prolonged exercise, suggests that supplementation with glutamine brings benefits for practice of exercises. This work aimed to show through a systematic review the effects of glutamine supplementation in exercise. The articles search was performed using the keywords glutamine, supplementation and exercise, the following databases: U.S. National Library of Medicine (PubMed), Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO), Capes periodicals, Science Direct, Medigraphic, Google academic, University libraries. Were analyzed studies from 1998 to 2010, and 11 were used in the final sample. Most studies that evaluated the effect of glutamine on the immune system and improves performance found no significant effects. The studies evaluating the effects on gluconeogenesis, acid- base balance and synthesis / degradation protein also found little effect. Thus, after analysis of studies, it was found that, although some studies have found benefits of glutamine supplementation, most observed little or no effect in the differents parameters evaluated.