Study design
A comparative, randomised study was undertaken with a crossover design. Each participant attended a screening visit (1 h), and then for each of the two arms of the study, a pre-study visit (30 min), an approximately 6-h study day visit (when 300 ml of nasogastric feed was administered over 1 h, with follow-up measurements over the subsequent 3 h), and a post-study day visit (30 min), 3 d later. The intervention feed, Mermed One, TERUMO CORPORATION, Japan (invented by KANEKA CORPORATION) contained sodium alginate as the main source of gelling fibre with polydextrose (a slowly fermented, non-gelling, synthetic glucose polymer)
Composition of the two feeds per 300 mlF + ALG, alginate-containing feed; F–ALG, alginate-free feed