ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Med.
Sec. Pulmonary Medicine
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmed.2025.1611981
Association Between Nutritional Risk and CRP Levels in Patients with Acute Exacerbation of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease
Provisionally accepted
JUN WU*
Peihong Liang- Affiliated Hospital of Guangdong Medical College Hospital, Zhanjiang, China
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Background:Patients with acute exacerbation of COPD frequently experience malnutrition, while the quantitative relationship between CRP and nutritional risk remains undefined. This study is the first to investigate this association. Methods: This retrospective cohort study analyzed 313 hospitalized patients diagnosed with acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (AECOPD).Participants were stratified into a nutritional risk group (n=55) and a non-risk group (n=258) using the NRS-2002 screening tool. Clinical data were analyzed via Wilcoxon rank-sum tests, binary logistic regression, and restricted cubic splines (RCS) to model the nonlinear CRP-nutritional risk relationship. Feature importance was further validated through SHAP (SHapley Additive exPlanations) machine learning interpretabilityframeworks. Results: The nutritional risk was significantly increased in high CRP group;RCS curve showed that CRP was positively correlated with risk;SHAP model showed that high CRP eigenvalue may be associated with increased nutritional risk. Conclusion: This study highlights the significant correlation between CRP levels and nutritional risk in patients with AECOPD, providing evidence for nutritional risk assessment and early intervention in patients with AECOPD. Keywords: chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), AECOPD, C-reactive protein (CRP), nutritional risk, Retrospective Study introduction Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a chronic respiratory disease characterized by airflow limitation, primarily caused by long-term smoking and air pollution. This disease significantly impacts the quality of life of patients, leading to high mortality rates, increased medical costs, and a substantial economic burden on patients, families, and society. According to global epidemiological data, COPD affects 8% to 10% or more of the population over 40 years of age, making it one of the leading causes of
Keywords: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), AECOPD, C-reactive protein (CRP), Nutritional risk, Retrospective study
Received: 15 Apr 2025; Accepted: 03 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 WU and Liang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: JUN WU, Affiliated Hospital of Guangdong Medical College Hospital, Zhanjiang, China
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