Nutricia urges nutrition emphasis in COVID-19 recovery to target muscle loss

10 Sep 2021 --- Nutricia, Danone’s medical nutrition arm, is urging nutrition to be integrated into medical care to improve COVID-19 patient recovery in hospital and after discharge. It has commissioned a survey that shows how nutritional challenges and functional impairments are frequent in patients hospitalized with COVID-19.

“For patients hospitalized with severe illness, nutrition support is essential to support recovery and needs to be continued after leaving the hospital,” Patrick Kamphuis, senior medical and scientific affairs director of adult care at Nutricia, tells NutritionInsight.

Ensuring continuity of nutritional care after discharge from the hospital is frequently a challenge. “This is an important point to address with regards to COVID-19 as many patients leave the hospital with a long road to recovery ahead of them,” he outlines. As a result of muscle loss, patients are weaker, recover more slowly and experience more difficulty with everyday tasks. 

COVID-19 takes a toll
The survey of 453 European adults hospitalized with COVID-19 reveals that two in three patients experienced clinically significant weight loss that was associated with a longer stay in hospital. 

This is consistent with clinical research conducted since the start of the pandemic showing a high prevalence of malnutrition in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19. 

Furthermore, patients reported symptoms like loss and change of smell and taste, diarrhea or difficulty swallowing, which can contribute to further worsening of nutritional issues.

Strength dwindles
Muscle loss is a common complication of critical illness and is associated with functional disability and longer recovery. 

The survey reports that 85 percent of people felt that they had lost muscle strength, and 42 percent felt much weaker than before their illness. 

The large majority of patients surveyed reported more difficulties with activities of daily life, including climbing the stairs (85 percent saying their ability to complete this was impacted), food shopping and getting out of bed (76 percent each) and preparing meals (67 percent).

“We know muscle mass plays an important role in health and disease and have long-running research programs focused on muscle-targeted medical nutrition and their impact on patient outcomes,” says Kamphuis.

Nutricia recently introduced an oral nutritional supplement designed for patients with disease-related malnutrition and muscle loss. “Its composition is intended to support muscle protein synthesis, strength and function.” 

Lacking aftercare
The survey also reports that patients’ key goal is regaining the strength they lost, with 51 percent citing this as the top expectation from nutritional support. This is closely followed by 45 percent of people who want to regain the ability to perform usual daily activities.

After discharge, 56 percent of patients who received nutritional support after leaving the hospital considered that it helped a lot or enormously with their recovery.These insights can help ensure people are supported in the things that matter the most, says Kamphuis. 

Only half of the patients surveyed received medical nutrition in hospital during their treatment. On discharge from the hospital, this number dropped to 15 percent of patients, highlighting gaps in continuity of care after leaving the hospital.

Nutrition is underutilized
The nutritional aspect of patient care needs more attention to improve the recovery of people who leave the hospital with significant physical impairments, emphasizes Dr. Cristina Cuerda. She is general secretary of the European Society for Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism (ESPEN), which is holding an annual conference where these results are presented. 

“In this research, we are hearing directly from the patients about their experience and expectations around nutrition during their COVID-19 illness. Their voices confirm what nutritional experts have been advising since early last year – nutrition is an underutilized area of care for this disease,” adds Kamphuis. 

He emphasizes that medical nutrition can positively contribute to clinical outcomes and quality of life for patients with a variety of conditions and diseases. 

“Unfortunately, healthcare professional awareness of the role of medical nutrition is still low – today only about one out of three patients receive the nutritional care that they need.” 

“All the research that is being conducted in this area, whether it is clinical research or patient surveys, give a better understanding of the role of nutrition in recovery from severe illness,” Kamphuis continues. 

In November, Nutricia highlighted the impact of malnutrition on the elderly populations during the pandemic. It has also granted approximately €1 million (US$1.1 million) to independent medical professionals to define guidelines for nutritional care for COVID-19 patients recovering after discharge.

By Katherine Durrell