Introduction
Nutrition plays an important role in disease prevention and treatment. A well-balanced diet can help support a strong immune system. This can help fight off diseases like COVID-19. This study explores the relationship between nutrition and COVID-19.
Purpose
The study aimed to explore the relationship between “nutritional status” and COVID-19. Nutritional status describes the balance between the foods that people eat and what their bodies need to be healthy. Social, cultural, biological, and economic factors can affect this balance. A good nutritional status is important to improve immune role. This helps the prognosis of the coronavirus (COVID-19) disease.
Methods
Researchers divided 429 COVID-19 patients into two groups based on nutritional status. The Controlling Nutritional Status (CONUT) score is a tool used to measure nutritional status. CONUT score measures substances in the blood related to diet, and uses these measurements to predict how healthy you are. The higher the score, the poorer the predicted nutritional status. The researchers placed patients into two categories. One group had a low score with a CONUT score of 4 or less. The second group had a high score with a CONUT score of 5 or more. The study compared the adverse outcomes of COVID-19 on the two groups.
Results
Around twice as many patients in the study had high CONUT scores compared to low CONUT scores. The high score group also had more elderly or diabetic patients. Thus, hospital admissions for COVID-19 consisted more of people with low nutritional status. Adverse COVID-19 outcomes became six times higher for 61-year-old or older patients in the high CONUT group.
Results indicated a 12 times higher risk of adverse outcomes for non-diabetic patients with high CONUT scores. That is, compared to low CONUT scores. Finally, patients with a total score of admission status less than six faced a significantly higher risk. Their risk of adverse outcomes was eight times higher compared to the low CONUT group.
Conclusion
The study indicates two major findings. Patients with good nutritional status (low CONUT scores) experience less adverse COVID-19 outcomes. Factors like gender, age, hypertension and urine red blood cell count also affected adverse outcomes. Thus, nutritional status should be a future method of COVID-19 intervention because of the role played in fighting the disease.
References
Zhou, J., Ma, Y., Liu, Y., Xiang, Y., Tao, C., Yu, H., & Huang, J. (2021). A Correlation Analysis between the Nutritional Status and Prognosis of COVID-19 Patients. The journal of nutrition, health & aging, 25(1), 84–93. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12603-020-1457-6
About the Author
Written by Ashlan Best.
SCIFAA 