Enteral versus Parenteral Nutrition as Nutritional Support after Allogeneic Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation: a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

ABSTRACT Nutritional support for patients undergoing allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HSCT) has been widely debated. Enteral nutrition (EN) is recommended as first-line nutritional support by the main international guidelines. However, these recommendations are based on weak evidence, and there is wide variability in the types of nutritional support among transplantation centers, with the majority providing parenteral nutrition (PN) instead of EN. Here we provide an up-to-date systematic review and meta-analysis of studies comparing EN and PN for nutritional support during the neutropenic period after allo-HSCT. The literature search strategy identified 13 papers, of which 10 compared clinical transplantation outcomes, 2 compared gut microbiota (GM) compositions, and 1 compared systemic metabolic profiles. For the meta-analysis, among the 10 clinical studies, 8 studies in which 2 groups were compared were selected: in 1 group, EN was provided as primary nutritional support in the neutropenic phase after allo-HSCT with or without the addition of PN (EN group), whereas in the other group, only PN was provided as nutritional support. The incidence rates of acute graft-versus-host disease (aGVHD) (relative risk [RR], 0.69; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.56 to 0.86; P = .0007), aGVHD grade III-IV (RR, 0.44; 95% CI, 0.30 to 0.64; P