Abstract

ONU, Justus U.  and  OSUJI, Portia N.. Double burden of malnutrition amongst patients with first-episode schizophrenia in a psychiatric hospital: A 1-year follow-up study. S. Afr. j. psyc. [online]. 2020, vol.26, n.1, pp.1-6. ISSN 2078-6786.  http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/sajpsychiatry.v26.i0.1564.

BACKGROUND: Despite the burgeoning data on the double burden of malnutrition (DBM) in sub-Saharan Africa, longitudinal studies to examine malnutrition amongst first-episode schizophrenia are uncommon in the modern literature. AIM: To determine the extent of nutritional variations amongst persons with schizophrenia at intervals of 1-year treatment follow-up. SETTING: This study was conducted at the Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital, Enugu, Nigeria. METHODS: Consecutive incident cases that fulfilled the criteria for schizophrenia were recruited into the study. After a baseline assessment, 206 incident cases of schizophrenia were followed up at 4th, 8th, 12th weeks, 6 months and 1 year for indicators of nutritional outcome. The body mass index (BMI) was used to measure the nutritional status amongst the study participants. Changes in the BMI across intervals of follow-up were examined using repeated measures analysis of variance, whereas the socio-demographic and clinical variables were evaluated as predictors of outcome using multiple regression analysis. RESULTS: After 1 year of treatment with antipsychotics, the prevalence of underweight decreased from 19.9% (95% CI, 19.8% - 20.0%) at baseline to 16.0% (95% CI, 15.9% - 16.1%) at 1 year, but the prevalence of overweight/obesity increased from 29.1% (95% CI, 29.0% - 29.2%) at baseline to 43.2% (95% CI, 43.0% - 43.3%) at 1 year of follow-up. The predictors of BMI at 1 year were antipsychotic medication (32.7% variance), duration of vagrancy (24.0%) and age at onset (20.0%). CONCLUSION: The finding of coexistence of undernutrition and overnutrition across the intervals of treatment follow-up underscores the need for comprehensive interventions to address both extremes of malnutrition amongst patients with schizophrenia.

Keywords : burden; double; malnutrition; first-episode; schizophrenia.