Long-term outcome of urea cycle disorders

Evaluation of long-term outcome of patients with urea cycle diseases (UCD) is needed for medical decisions and counselling. Own data comparing outcome of UCD patients with the old treat- ment limited to protein restriction (i.e. close to the natural history) with that of patients on the modern conservative treatment have shown that gains in survival occur at the cost of more mentally retarded surviving patients. We discuss the possible bias in long- term outcome studies of those rare inheritable disorders where non-predictable environmental factors leading to catabolic crises have a crucial impact on prognosis. A combination of peak or ini- tial ammonia value combined with the duration of coma is dis- cussed as a criterion for prognosis of handicap. The neglect of dietary compensation of branched chain amino acid deficiency worsened by phenylbutyrate treatment in some published proto- cols could well be an additional cause of the non satisfactory long- term results of conservative treatment which - in our view - main- ly aim at bridging optimally the period of late neonatal presenta- tion until liver transplantation in patients with CPS and OTC defi- ciency (except for mild forms) (Acta gastroenterol. belg., 2005, 68, 466-468).