A Study of Association between Nutritional Status and Anemia in Older People

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Anemia and malnutrition are highly prevalentin older people and they frequently accompany each otherand are associated with increased morbidity and poor healthoutcome in older patients. The present study was undertakento determine the prevalence of malnutrition in anemic oldersubjects and to find out if there is any association betweennutritional status and severity and types of anemia in olderpeople.Material and methods: This cross-sectional observationalstudy was conducted in the Department of Geriatric medicine,Madras Medical College, Chennai. 93 anemic older subjectsaged 65 and above were selected to participate. Mini nutritionalassessment was done in these study subjects to assess theirnutritional status. To analyse the data IBM SPSS Statistics forWindows was used.Results: Of the 93 anemic older subjects, 55 were males and38 were females. The prevalence of malnutrition in the anemicolder subjects was 31.2%. 8.6% of the study participantshad normal nutritional status and 60.2% were at risk ofmalnutrition. . In this study 37.9% of the malnourished hadanemia of chronic inflammation and 31% of the malnourishedhad iron deficiency anemia. In this study we found noassociation between severity of anemia and nutritional status.In this study we did not find any association between anemia ofchronic inflammation, anemia of chronic renal insufficiency,iron deficiency anemia and nutritional status. In this study itwas found that there is an association between unexplainedanemia and nutritional status.Conclusion: This study found that prevalence of malnutritionamong the anemic older patients was 31.2%. This clearlyindicates that screening for malnutrition is essential for olderanemic subjects.