Do nutritional assessment scores have a relationship with transthyretin levels?

Abstract Background and aims: nutritional screening tools assess factors like weight loss, BMI, food intake, and disease severity to determine a patient’s nutritional risk and needed care. Plasma transthyretin is a practical measurement used to assess nutritional evolution due to its rapid response to food intake. This study examines the relationship between nutritional scores, transthyretin protein levels, and the possibility of death. Methods: the sample consisted of 302 patients hospitalized in the wards or intensive care unit of a public teaching hospital, using parenteral nutrition as the primary source of nutrition. Five nutritional screening tools were applied, and patient charts were verified for transthyretin levels. Results: from the sample, 260 were adults, and 42 were children, with a mean age of 48.3 years. When evaluating the patient’s outcome in relation to the scores, the Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool proved to be better at predicting death (p-value = 0.02). None of the scores were related to transthyretin levels, showing that lower transthyretin values did not influence nutritional risk. Conclusion: we believe early identification of nutritional risk through nutritional scores is necessary for better nutritional monitoring to minimize unfavorable outcomes. This study corroborates the more recent concept that transthyretin is not useful for determining unfavorable outcomes in hospitalized patients with a severe inflammatory process. In clinical practice, identifying a patient at nutritional risk according to the Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool and promoting adequate nutritional monitoring may reduce mortality.