Nutritional assessment in patients with chronic gastrointestinal symptoms: comparison of functional and organic disorders.

We assessed the nutritional status of 119 patients with chronic gastrointestinal symptoms due to organic disorders (inflammatory bowel disease, IBD; peptic ulcer, PU; malabsorption syndrome, M; and malignant gastrointestinal tumours, T), by standard anthropometry and marker proteins (albumin; retinol-binding protein, RBP; and thyroxine-binding prealbumin, TBPA). We also studied 31 patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and 75 age-matched healthy controls (C). Compared with healthy controls, patients with organic bowel disease had significant abnormality of two or more anthropometric measurements (P less than 0.05). Plasma albumin was reduced in patients with IBD, M and T (P less than 0.001), but RBP and TBPA measurements were lower in all patient categories (P less than 0.01) including IBS. Stepwise discriminant analysis of the patient data alone, using three to six parameters, correctly separated 65 per cent PU patients, 66 per cent IBD and M, 72 per cent IBS and 88 per cent patients with T from other disease categories. We conclude that patients with chronic gastrointestinal symptoms often have some nutritional disturbances and that simple anthropometric and protein measurements might help us to distinguish patients with functional bowel disease from those with organic bowel disease.