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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Nutr.
Sec. Clinical Nutrition
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnut.2025.1547655
Association Between Nutritional Status and Pneumonia in Patients with Spontaneous Intracerebral Hemorrhage
Provisionally accepted- Department of neurology, Affiliated Dongyang Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Dongyang, China
Background: Stroke-associated pneumonia (SAP) is a common and serious complication in patients with spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage (SICH), contributing to prolonged hospital stays and poor outcomes. Nutritional status has been linked to the development of SAP in patients with ischemic stroke, but its role in SICH patients remains understudied. This study aims to evaluate the predictive value of the Nutritional Risk Screening-2002 (NRS-2002) score for SAP in SICH patients and to compare it with other nutritional assessment tools.Methods: This retrospective observational study included 404 consecutive SICH patients admitted to Dongyang People's Hospital from January 2023 to May 2024. Nutritional risk was assessed using the NRS-2002 score upon admission, and SAP was diagnosed within the first 7 days of hospitalization. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses identified risk factors for SAP, and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were used to compare the predictive accuracy of the NRS-2002, Controlling Nutritional Status (CONUT) score, and Prognostic Nutritional Index (PNI) for SAP.Results: Among the 404 patients, 97 developed SAP. A higher NRS-2002 score was significantly associated with an increased risk of SAP (OR: 1.575, 95% CI: 1.134-2.186, P = 0.007). ROC analysis showed that the NRS-2002 score (AUC: 0.768, 95% CI: 0.716-0.820) outperformed the CONUT (AUC: 0.597, 95% CI: 0.530-0.663) and PNI (AUC: 0.588, 95% CI: 0.519-0.657) in predicting SAP (P < 0.05). Subgroup analysis revealed that the NRS-2002 score ≥3 was particularly predictive of SAP in patients with weight loss, severe stroke, and those without hypertension or with diabetes.The NRS-2002 score is a valuable predictor of pneumonia in SICH patients, with higher scores correlating with a significantly increased risk of SAP. This highlights the importance of early nutritional assessment in identifying high-risk patients and potentially guiding clinical interventions to reduce SAP incidence.
Keywords: Spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage, Stroke-associated pneumonia, Nutritional risk screening-2002, Controlling nutritional status, Prognostic nutritional index, Malnutrition
Received: 18 Dec 2024; Accepted: 26 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhang, Kang, Du, Xu, Li and Jiang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Lele Kang, Department of neurology, Affiliated Dongyang Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Dongyang, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.