Amino acid requirements of older adults: time to consider separate recommendations from young adults

Purpose of review to present recent data on amino acid requirements in older adults determined by the minimally invasive indicator amino acid oxidation (IAAO) method, and to compare them to current recommendations derived from young adult data. Recent findings using the minimally invasive IAAO method we estimated the requirements for leucine, lysine and Sulphur amino acids (SAA) in older adults. The leucine requirement for older adults is more than twice the current recommendations. A sex effect on SAA requirement demonstrates an increased requirement in males compared to females which represent a >70% higher estimate for older males compared to current recommendations. For lysine, there is both an age and sex effect with older females >70 years requiring close to 50% more lysine than current recommendations. Summary Amino acid requirements for older adults derived using the minimally invasive IAAO method demonstrated a higher requirement for key indispensable amino acids in older adults compared to current recommendation. Since amino acid requirements are a necessary consideration when assessing protein quality, these results highlight the need for a separation of the amino acid recommendations between young and older adults for improved assessment and prescription of diets for older adults.