to investigate the prevalence of malnutrition and the association between Body Mass Index (BMI), Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA) and five-year mortality in a representative population of very old (>85 years) people.
A prospective cohort study.
A population-based study of very old people in northern Sweden and western Finland, living in institutional care or in the community.
Out of 1195 potential participants, 832 were included (mean age 90.2±4.6 years).
Nutritional status was assessed using BMI and MNA and the association of those two variables with five-year mortality was analyzed.
The mean BMI value for the whole population was 25.1±4.5 kg/m2, with no difference between genders (P=0.938). The mean MNA score was 22.5±4.6 for the whole sample, and it was lower for women than for men (P