Prevalence and Prognostic Significance of Malnutrition in Patients with Abnormal Glycemic Status and Coronary Artery Disease: A Multicenter Cohort Study in China

This study sought to investigate the prevalence and prognostic significance of malnutrition in patients with an abnormal glycemic status and coronary artery disease (CAD). This secondary analysis of a multicenter prospective cohort included 5710 CAD patients with prediabetes and 9328 with diabetes. Four objective tools were applied to assess the nutritional status of the study population. The primary endpoint was all-cause death. The association of malnutrition with clinical outcomes was examined using Cox proportional hazards regression. The proportion of malnutrition varied from 8% to 57% across the assessment tools. Diabetic patients were more likely to be malnourished than prediabetic patients. During a median follow-up of 2.1 years, 456 all-cause deaths occurred. The adjusted hazard ratios and 95% confidence interval for all-cause deaths of moderate-severe malnutrition defined by different tools ranged from 1.59 (1.03, 2.46) to 2.08 (0.92, 4.73) in prediabetic patients and 1.51 (1.00, 2.34) to 2.41 (1.78, 3.27) in diabetic patients. In conclusion, malnutrition is not rare in CAD patients with abnormal glycemic status. Moderate-severe malnutrition strongly predicted all-cause death regardless of the assessment tool. Assessing the nutritional status for all CAD patients with prediabetes and diabetes to identify individuals at high risk of all-cause death may help the risk assessment and prognosis improvement.