Correlation of Nutritional Risk Indicators and Cognitive Function on Mexican Hemodialysis Patients: Cross-Sectional...

Deterioration of cognitive status and malnutrition are very common in patients with hemodialysis; these patients usually have a greater decline in their cognitive performance than individuals of the same age in the general population. The objective of the study was to correlate cognitive function with nutritional risk indicators in adults receiving hemodialysis treatment in the state of Colima, Mexico.

Analytical, cross-sectional study, which included 63 people (aged >18 years) of both sexes, who attended the Colima State Hemodialysis Center. Each patient who agreed to participate signed an informed consent. Nutritional risk was measured with the Nutritional Control Scale. To evaluate cognitive status, the Brief Neuropsychological Test in Spanish was used.

Overall, 38.1% of the participants were women and 61.9% were men, with a median age of 52 (interquartile range 24.5) years. In addition, 58.7% of the participants presented cognitive impairment, and 14.3% were at nutritional risk. Albumin presented a positive correlation with the recall and encoding domains, the latter being stronger in the group of patients with moderate to severe nutritional risk, and lymphocytes were strongly and negatively correlated with the encoding domain.

No association was found between cognitive status and nutritional status in this study. However, a positive correlation of albumin and lymphocytes with some domains of cognitive function was found, especially in patients with nutritional risk.