Ghrelin, anthropometry and nutritional assessment in geriatric hospital patients

Abstract

For our patients aged 67 to 94, no correlation with age could be shown. Nevertheless the basal level of ghrelin is substantially lower when compared to a younger population with similar BMI, while the anorectic hormone leptin shows no substantial difference. This causes a more anorectic hormonal constellation which may contribute to the loss of appetite in geriatric patients.

Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA) and biochemical markers of cachexia in metastatic lung cancer patients: Interrelations and associations with prognosis

“…In previous studies involving elderly hospitalized patients, MNA was significantly correlated with hemoglobin and albumin [23][24][25][26][27][28][29], CRP [25] and leptin [30][31][32][33]. Our results are in concordance with those of Slaviero et al who demonstrated that MNA score was strongly correlated with CRP in patients with NSCLC [21].…”

Comparison of Serum and Salivary Ghrelin in Healthy Adults, Morbidly Obese, and Patients with Metastatic Carcinoma

“…Several studies demonstrated a strong negative correlation between BMI and ghrelin serum levels, which was confirmed in this report for serum ghrelin, but not for salivary ghrelin [7,25,26]. This agrees with most of the studies dealing with salivary ghrelin, which showed a weakly negative correlation but without significance [2,11,21,22].…”

“…Circulating serum ghrelin concentration has been shown to increase from early adulthood to middle age in humans and subsequently decrease in old age [8,26]. However, other reports did not show a significant correlation, especially when BMI was taken into consideration [27,28].…”

Relationship between plasma ghrelin levels and insulin resistance and blood pressure in octogenarians

“…In previous studies, fasting ghrelin levels were higher in the women than men, with the difference being highly significant. Some [28,29] , but not all [25] (as we found) studies also found higher level ghrelin in women. The reason for these discrepancies is unclear.…”

“…It has been speculated that aging is associated with reduced production of ghrelin or attenuated endogenous ghrelin signaling [23] . However, it was reported that circulating ghrelin level was higher [24] , lower [25] or no different [26] between healthy older and young adults on univariate analysis. Consistent evidence has been lacking that circulating ghrelin level increases or decreases with age, even with other factors taken into account.…”