Malnutrition and diabetes are likely to co-occur. There are few reports on the association between nutritional status and foot risk in patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D). Therefore, we aimed to investigate this relationship in this cross-sectional study. We investigated the relationships between objective data assessment (ODA), especially Controlling Nutritional Status (CONUT) score and foot risk, evaluated by the International Working Group on the Diabetic Foot (IWGDF), in consecutive patients with T2D. Patients were divided into groups 0 to 3 by IWGDF, and groups 1 to 3 were defined as high-risk groups. Among 469 patients, 42.6% (n = 200) of them had high-risk foot. Patients with high-risk foot were significantly older (71.2 ± 11.3 vs. 64.2 ± 13.4 years, p < 0.001) and had a longer duration of diabetes (18.0 ± 12.0 vs. 11.5 ± 10.0 years, p < 0.001) than those in the low-risk group. In the high-risk group, serum albumin level, total lymphocyte count, hemoglobin, and CONUT score were significantly worse, especially in older patients (≥75 years). Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that there was a positive correlation between CONUT score and high-risk foot in older patients (OR, 1.37; 95% CI, 1.05−1.86; p = 0.021). Our results indicated that nutritional status, assessed by ODA, correlated with high-risk foot, especially in older patients with T2D.
Keywords: clinical practice; diabetes; foot risk; nutritional status.