Abstract :
Hospitalized older people COVID-19 patients are usually the ones suffering its negative outcomes. This makes prevention of risk factors of negative outcomes in such population a priority. Malnutrition is common in older people and can negatively affect their outcome. Since assessment of nutrition in the Hospitalized COVID-19 patients can be challenging, replacing conventional nutritional screen by routine laboratory investigations that can show metabolic and nutritional state can be useful. Hence; our study focused on finding the relation between nutritional and metabolic biomarkers can be used as alternative indicators could correlate with the clinical outcomes of hospitalized older patients with COVID-19 infection. A cross-sectional study in a major tertiary hospital in Cairo including all older people age 50 or more who fit inclusion and exclusion criteria admitted to the hospital during the second wave of COVID-19 infection (confirmed by PCR). On admission, anorexia and lab findings were recorded for serum creatinine, Blood urea nitrogen, Lactate dehydrogenase enzyme, ferritin, procalcitonin and C-reactive protein. Our findings show that most studied markers were highly significantly associated with patients that suffered negative outcomes such as prolonged length of hospital stay, ICU admission, mechanical ventilation and in-hospital mortality but they were not significantly associated with thromboembolic events. Anorexia was not associated with any of the studied negative outcomes. Studied biomarkers might be useful in improving the prediction and prevention of negative outcomes in hospitalized older people suffering from COVID-19.
