Commentary on "Prevalence of Malnutrition and 1-Year All-Cause Mortality in Institutionalized Elderly Comparing...

The nutrition community has worked to develop an international understanding of diagnostic criteria for malnutrition. In this Commentary are thoughts on a clinical utility study of the latest standard malnutrition definition, the Global Leadership in Malnutrition (GLIM) criteria. In "Prevalence of malnutrition and 1-year all-cause mortality in institutionalized elderly comparing different combinations of the GLIM criteria," the authors created and then compare each of 12 different combinations of the GLIM components in a Spanish nursing home sample and find a higher mortality rate among participants with malnutrition and inflammation than participants with malnutrition alone. In working toward the advantages offered by a rigorously validated and internationally accepted malnutrition definition that is age, sex, location, race, and ethnicity neutral, there are several points to consider. There is a strong need to eliminate clinician-, disease-, or location-specific malnutrition criteria in favor of definitions that apply broadly, are specific to malnutrition rather than disease or location, and are validated against a malnutrition standard. With the GLIM criteria, it is likely that some existing malnutrition screening tools will overestimate malnutrition risk because they contain common criteria that do not change in response to malnutrition intervention. With consistent criteria, consistently applied, it is likely that the overall prevalence of malnutrition will change in some groups. malnutrition; nutrition assessment; adult malnutrition; geriatric malnutrition.