Multidimensional nutritional assessment in Crohns disease: cross-sectional comparison of active disease and remission
Malnutrition is common in Crohn’s disease and more likely during active disease; recognizing it matters because nutritional status affects symptoms, recovery, and treatment tolerance.
A multidimensional approach (simple measures like BMI and MNA-SF plus targeted blood tests) may better identify people who need nutrition support.
Adults with Crohn’s disease (especially those with active disease), gastroenterologists, IBD nurses, dietitians, and researchers studying nutrition in IBD.
What To Know
What to know This medRxiv preprint reports a cross-sectional study of 127 adults with Crohn’s disease comparing nutritional status in active disease versus remission.
Researchers used multiple anthropometric measures (BMI, mid-upper arm and calf circumference, triceps skinfold, mid-arm muscle circumference), the Mini Nutritional Assessment–Short Form (MNA-SF), and biochemical blood markers (hemoglobin, serum iron, folate, B12, albumin, zinc).
Disease activity was classified by CDAI, endoscopic scoring, and MR enterography. Key findings presented in the abstract: nearly half of the cohort met criteria for malnutrition overall (47.2%), with much higher prevalence in active disease than remission (81.0% vs 14.1%).
Patients with active Crohn’s had lower anthropometric measures, lower MNA-SF scores, and lower hemoglobin, iron, albumin, and zinc; folate and B12 did not differ. Anthropometric measures and MNA-SF correlated strongly with each other, while biochemical markers were less consistent.
How I read this: the study supports using a multidimensional nutritional assessment (clinical/anthropometric plus biochemical tests) in Crohn’s disease and highlights that malnutrition is especially common during active disease.
Because this is a medRxiv preprint (publish-ahead-of-print) and only the abstract/partial text is available here, the results should be considered preliminary until peer review and full publication are complete.
This is a medRxiv preprint (publish-ahead-of-print) and the supplied text is an abstract/partial extraction; findings are preliminary until peer review. The study is cross-sectional, so it describes associations at one time point rather than proving causation.
The abstract reports use of MR enterography and standard disease activity indices but full methods and limitations should be checked in the final paper.
