Background

: Inflammation plays a crucial role in nutritional status and can be useful in early nutritional risk screening of patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, this study aimed to assess the association between systemic inflammatory markers and nutritional risk tools in ICU patients with COVID-19.

Methods

: Patients with confirmed COVID-19 and admitted to the ICU were enrolled in a retrospective, observational, cross-sectional study. The median of C-reactive protein (CRP ≥13.8 mg/dL) and the neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR ≥12.6) upon admission were used to dichotomize patients.

Results

: Of the 73 patients, 63% were men; the average age was 56 years, and the median length of hospital stay was 10 (25th: 4 and 75th: 17) days. When nutrition risk screening tools were used, 85% were at risk according to Nutritional Risk Screening (i.e., NRS ≥3), whereas 42% had high risk according to Nutrition Risk in the Critically Ill (mNUTRIC ≥5), and 57% were moderately or severely malnourished according to the Subjective Global Assessment (SGA, B/C). Mortality was higher in the NLR ≥12.6 group than NLR<12.6, with no difference between CRP groups. A significant association was found only between NLR and mNUTRIC, even when adjusted by sex, age, and BMI (OR: 1.36, 95%CI:1.06–1.76, p=0.016), but not between CRP and nutritional risk.

Conclusion

: Although the inflammatory marker CRP is the most used in hospital clinical practice, we found that only NLR was associated with the nutritional risk (NUTRIC score).

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