Screening of malnutrition and its correlates among a sample of rural elderly in Qalyobeya Governorate, Egypt

Abstract

Background: Malnutrition is a multifactorial problem that contributes to many health problems, as a cause or as a consequence. In elderly, it is a major health problem as it leads to progressive decline in physical and cognitive health, increased utilization of health services, and increased mortality. Aim: To screen the elderly persons for malnutrition and to detect the underlying factors of this problem. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted on 320 elderly persons. A structured interview questionnaire sheet was used. It included sociodemographic data; anthropometric measurement; the Mini-Nutritional Assessment-Short Form in its Arabic version; and physical, psychosocial, and cognitive risk factors of malnutrition. Results: Overall, 35% of the participants were malnourished and 38.4% were at risk of malnutrition. There were significant associations between malnutrition or being at risk of malnutrition and all the studied sociodemographic characteristics (P<0.05) except tobacco smoking (P=0.39). Moreover, significant association (P<0.05) was detected between malnutrition and lack of physical exercise, oral and gastrointestinal tract problems, chronic pain, physical dependency, number of chronic diseases, and number of drugs taken regularly. Social isolation, insomnia, special senses problems, and depression were the significant psychosocial and cognitive risk factors. Conclusion: Malnutrition or being at risk of malnutrition is prevalent among the rural elderly persons in Qalyobeya Governorate. The underlying factors were sociodemographic factors, lack of physical exercise, morbidities, and some psychological and cognitive factors. It is recommended that nutritional assessment should be included in any designed geriatric healthcare and health appraisal for the elderly.

Social and Economic Factors and Malnutrition or the Risk of Malnutrition in the Elderly: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Observational Studies

“…A total of 106 studies were full-text assessed, and 66 were excluded because of the following reasons: results not related to the outcomes studied (n = 48), text not available (n = 8), non-representative population sample (n = 5), and wrong study design (n = 5). Finally, as shown in Figure 1, 40 studies were included in the systematic review [13,14, and 16 studies in the meta-analysis [13,20,21,25,26,29,30,35,36,39,42,43,45,[51][52][53]. related to the socioeconomic variable was required.…”

“…Of the total 40 included studies, 36 were cross-sectional [13,14,17,18,[20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][51][52][53] and four were cohort studies [16,19,33,50]. The study population was 60 years old and above, except for two studies that focused only on people aged over either 85 years [26] or 90 years [37].…”

“…All of the studies included people of both genders, except two studies [50,51]-one of them was only focused on men [50] and the other only on women [51]. Of the 40 studies included in the systematic review, according to the Development Human Index from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) [54], 33 were conducted in regions with a high development human index (Poland [39], Sweden [38,40], China [30,37,53], Turkey [52], Canada [49,50], Italy [14,35], Taiwan [16], Lebanon [17,20,25], Brazil [18], Ireland [19,31], Finland [21], Spain [13,22,26], Norway [23,34], Portugal [24], Korea [27], Iran [28], Sri Lanka [29], New Zealand [48], Mexico [32], Amsterdam [33], Malaysia [36], and Shanghai [51]), five were conducted in regions with a medium development human index (Bangladesh [41,44], India [42], South Africa [43], and Egypt [45]), and two were conducted in regions with a low development human index (Central Africa…”

“…Of the 40 observational studies included in the systematic review, regarding the tools used to assess the nutritional status, 29 studies used the MNA [13,14,[16][17][18]20,21,[23][24][25][26][28][29][30][31][32][34][35][36][37][39][40][41][42][43]45,[51][52][53], one of which also used the Norwegian version of the Nutritional Form For the Elderly (NUFFE-NO) [34]. Of the other studies, five used only the Body Mass Index (BMI) [19,22,33,44,46] and one also used self-reported weight loss [19], four used the Senior in the community: risk evaluation for eating and nutrition (SCREEN II) [38,[48][49][50] and two used the Nutritional Screening Initiative (NSI) [27,47].…”

“…Of the total of 40 observational studies included in the systematic review, eight different socioeconomic variables were evaluated: 31 studies evaluated the educational level [13,14,16,18-20, 22,24-30,33,35-37,39,41-49,51-53], 27 the fact of living alone or cohabiting [13,14,19,21,22,[25][26][27][28][29]31,32,[36][37][38][39][40][42][43][44][45][48][49][50][51][52][53], 24 the marital status [13,14,16,19,23,24,26,27,29,30,[33][34][35][36]39,41,42,[44][45][46]48,…”