Baseline nutritional assessment in advanced cancer patients receiving palliative chemotherapy

Depletion of nutritional reserves and significant weight loss can lead to an increased risk of morbidity, reduced chemotherapy response, and shorter survival in patients with cancer. Weight loss and malnutrition are recognized to result from multifactorial processes, which if assessed and managed appropriately may lead to improved treatment outcome. Numerous methodologies are used for the assessment of nutritional status. However, it remains unclear which of these tools is the most appropriate in the setting of cancer chemotherapy. The aim of this study was to investigate the use of various fundamental assessment tools that could be applied to the routine clinical evaluation of nutritional status in patients with advanced solid malignancies before treatment with palliative chemotherapy. We investigated the interrelationships between biochemical indices, anthropometric measures, and a nutritional screening tool, the Mini-Nutritional Assessment, in 73 patients. Many of these measures were highly interrelated, but the baseline history of weight loss in these patients was strongly correlated to the Mini-Nutritional Assessment (MNA) score (P < 0.0005). In turn, baseline weight loss and the MNA score were strongly correlated to serum C-reactive protein (a marker of acute-phase response). In some patients, malnutrition was linked to disease- or treatment-related upper digestive tract morbidity. Testing for the serum concentration of C-reactive protein at baseline may identify a subset of patients for whom a decline in nutritional status is linked to the presence of an active inflammatory response, a recognized precursor of cachexia