Evaluation of Fatigue and Nutritional Aspects in Patients With Crohn’s Disease at a Reference Center for IBD in the City of Salvador-BA
AIBD 2023
Background:
Fatigue is described as a lack of energy or an overwhelming feeling of tiredness with limitation of daily activities that is not relieved by rest. Fatigue is twice as common in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), particularly Crohn’s disease (CD). Fatigue in IBD is multifactorial, with contributions from active inflammation, nutritional deficiency, altered metabolism and psychological comorbidity. To evaluate the association between fatigue and anthropometric parameters in patients with Crohn’s disease.
Methods:
This is a cross-sectional observational study. The study was approved by the HGRS Research Ethics Committee. Participants are volunteers aged 18 years or older, who had a confirmed diagnosis of CD and who agreed to sign the free consent form. Data collection was carried out in the period from Jan-ago./2023, with patients in outpatient follow-up and application of a questionnaire with sociodemographic data, Montreal classification, Harvey-Bradshaw Index, pharmacological therapy, anthropometry and IBD Fatigue Scale (IBD-F). Body mass index and corrected arm muscle area (AMBc) were calculated. All statistical analyzes were performed using SPSS version 21.0.
Results:
76 patients with CD were included, 59% (45) are female, with a mean age of 40.20 years (±13.06), 86.2% (65) non-White, 50.0% (38) with complete secondary education. The majority of patients, 81.58% (62), presented some degree of fatigue, with the majority being female 67.16% (42) and those in remission 79.1% (49). Among patients with fatigue, 41.79% (26) had colonic (L2) location and 28.35% (18) ileocolonic (L3) location, 46.77% (29) presented eutrophy, 38.70% (24) excess underweight and only 14.53% (9) underweight, and 58% (36) had adequate AMBc.
Conclusions:
Fatigue was highly prevalent in CD patients, mainly women, in remission, with adequate muscle tissue reserve and who were not underweight.
