AB0337 Assessment of nutritional status in women with rheumatoid arthritis measured by dual energy x-ray absorptiometry

Background As many other chronic diseases, rheumatoid arthritis (RA) has been related to an impairment of the nutritional status of multifactorial etiology. Even if Body Mass Index (BMI) has traditionally been used, it is not always a valid method, and there are still lots of questions without answer in how to evaluate ideally the nutritional status in these patients. Only very few studies had evaluated it by Dual Energy X Ray Absorptiometry (DXA). Objectives 1) To evaluate the nutritional status in women with RA and to compare with a population of same age women without RA using DXA for the analysis of whole body composition, 2) differences between the prevalence of alterations of the nutritional status measured by DXA and by the classical methods used in clinical care, 3) relation of RA time of evolution, inflammatory activity, physical function and dietary intake on altered nutritional status evaluated by DXA. Methods Case-control study including 89 patients that were diagnosed with RA and a control group (100) composed by patients affected by other non-inflammatory rheumatic diseases as soft tissue diseases. All the clinical charts were revised in order to record the following data: age, BMI, RA duration, history, activity and disability, serum albumin, Dietary intake, Whole body DXA assessment and Skeletal muscle index (SMI). Results Mean age of patients was 62±8 years. Mean duration of RA was 13.7±9.3 years. Mean DAS28 was 3.7±1.4 and mean Health Assessment Questionnaire was 0.88±0.77. BMI of the patients was 27.43±5.16 and 27.78±3.98 in controls (p: ns). Albumin was within normal range in all patients. RA patients presented a statistically significant lower lean mass than controls in all locations and lower fat mass in limbs, along with a higher fat trunk. RA duration was found to be inversely correlated to BMI and lean mass and directly correlated with fat mass. Neither BMI nor albumin correlated with DXA parameters. RA patients fulfilled criteria of sarcopenia in 44% of de cases vs 19% of controls (p Conclusions RA patients have an impairment of nutritional status associated to time of evolution that resembles sarcopenia and that is not predicted by BMI. Disclosure of Interest None declared