Nutritional Assessment in Patients with Pulmonary Nontuberculous Mycobacteriosis

OBJECTIVE: To determine the nutritional factors that influence disease spread in patients with pulmonary Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC) infection. METHODS: A prospective observational study. PATIENTS: Patients with pulmonary MAC infection were enrolled in this study. Chest computed tomography (CT), abdominal CT, and physical, clinical, and nutritional laboratory data were collected after obtaining informed consent. RESULTS: Seventy-eight patients (16 males and 62 females) were consecutively enrolled. While the mean body mass index (BMI) was low (19.6 ± 2.7 kg/m(2)), the mean serum albumin concentration was within normal range (4.2 ± 0.2 g/dL). We evaluated the number of affected lung segments to define the degree of disease spread, and examined the relationships between various parameters and disease spread. Multivariate analysis identified the duration of the disease (+1.6 segment/100 months, p=0.03), BMI (-0.5 segment/BMI, p=0.003), and white blood cell count (+0.7 segment/1,000 WBC, p=0.03) as factors contributing to disease spread. CONCLUSION: BMI is an excellent marker for nutritional assessment and for predicting disease spread in patients with pulmonary MAC infection.