P525 - EVALUATING PREALBUMIN AS A BIOMARKER FOR MALNUTRITION SEVERITY ASSESSMENT IN PEDIATRIC ANOREXIA NERVOSA

P525

EVALUATING PREALBUMIN AS A BIOMARKER FOR MALNUTRITION SEVERITY ASSESSMENT IN PEDIATRIC ANOREXIA NERVOSA

A. Vidović^1,*, N. Nikolac Gabaj², B. Perše¹, M. Galešić³, M. Kršić⁴, S. Mašković⁵, M. Mustapić⁶, R. Takač⁶, N. Matić⁷, O. Žaja^1,8

¹Department of Pediatrics, ²University Hospital Centre Sestre Milosrdnice, Zagreb, Croatia, ³Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden, ⁴The university hospital of the Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany, ⁵LabPlus Clinic Zagreb, Zagreb, ⁶Šibenik-Knin County General Hospital, Šibenik, ⁷The School of Medicine, University of Split, ⁸Department of Pediatrics, University Hospital of Split , Split, Croatia

Rationale: Early and accurate assessment of malnutrition is critial in pediatric anorexia nervosa (AN) to guide timely interventions and improve outcomes. This study investigates role of prealbumin as a potential biomarker for nutritional status in this population, adressing the lack of reliable markers for assessing malnutrition in this context.

Methods: This prospective cohort study included 66 pediatric patients with anorexia nervosa (63 girls and 3 boys). A comprehensive set of clinical parameters—including body mass index (BMI), BMI Z-score, disease duration, percentage of body mass (BM) loss, and rate of BM loss—along with laboratory markers, including prealbumin, were analyzed in all participants. The study was approved by the institutional ethics committee, and written informed consent was obtained from all guardians. Results are presented as medians with interquartile ranges and analyzed using Spearman’s correlation coefficient. A p-value of <0.05 was considered statistically significant.

Results: No statistically significant correlation was observed between prealbumin concentration and BMI (ρ = 0.15, P = 0.232), disease duration (ρ = -0.02, P = 0.908), BMI Z-score (ρ = 0.08, P = 0.531), percentage of BM loss (ρ = -0.13, P = 0.317), or rate of BM loss (ρ = -0.09, P = 0.461).

Conclusion: Although prealbumin is frequently proposed as a potential biomarker for malnutrition in organic diseases—owing to its short half-life and relative independence from hydration status, liver function, and kidney function—our study found no correlation between prealbumin concentration and clinical indicators of starvation. Thus, its utility as a biomarker for malnutrition severity assessment in pediatric anorexia nervosa appears to be limited

Disclosure of Interest: None declared