Malnutrition screening by Mini-Nutritional Assessment and Short-Form Mini-Nutritional Assessment in patients with Alzheimer's disease

Objective To evaluate the applicability of Mini-Nutritional Assessment(MNA),Short-Form Mini-Nutritional Assessment(MNA-SF)in the malnutrition screening of patients with Alzheimer's disease(AD).Methods MNA and MNA-SF were performed in 267 AD patients.The correlation between the screening results were compared.Results According to MNA,the rates of malnutrition,potential malnutrition,and normal nutritional status were 59.7%,20.9%,and 19.4%,respectively.The sensitivity was 73.4%and the specificity was 60.1%.According to MNA-SF,the rates of malnutrition and normal nutritional status were 70.4%and 29.6%.The sensitivity was 50.6%and the specificity was 92.4%.The screening results of these two tools were significantly correlated(r=0.924,P<0.01).Conclusions MNA and MNA-SF are reliable tools for evaluating the nutritional status of AD patients.While MNA-SF is more convenient and feasible,the combination of these two tools may be helpful.