Aging & Social Change: Eleventh Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

Health of the elderly has become a public health challenge globally. Aging is accompanied by many health problems and disabilities. The objectives of the research are to screen elderly persons for malnutrition and to detect the underlying factors of this problem. This cross sectional study was conducted on 320 elderly persons. A structured interview questionnaire sheet was used. It included Socio-demographic data, Anthropometric measurement, Mini Nutritional Assessment-Short Form (MNA-SF) in its Arabic version, Physical, Psychosocial and Cognitive risk factors of malnutrition. It was found that 35% of the participants were malnourished and 38.4% were at risk of malnutrition. There were significant associations between malnutrition or being at risk of malnutrition and all the studied socio-demographic characters (P<0.05) except tobacco smoking (P=0.39). also, significant association (P<0.05) was detected between malnutrition and lack of physical exercise (OR=2.1, 95%CI=1.07-4.3), oral and GIT problems (ORs=12.2 and 2.8 respectively), chronic pain (OR=2.0, 95%CI=1.16-3.5), physical dependency, number of chronic diseases and the number of drugs taken regularly. Social isolation, insomnia, special sense problems and depression were the significant psychosocial and cognitive risk factors. We conclude that malnutrition or being at risk of malnutrition are prevalent among the rural elderly persons in Egypt.