Development and Validation of a New Paediatric Inflammatory Bowel Disease NUTrition Risk Score (PIBD-NUTS)

Children with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) including both Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) can be at high risk of developing malnutrition due to the nature of their condition. It is also believed that some children with IBD, in need of nutritional care, are not identified quickly by their healthcare professionals. This may negatively affect their nutrition, disease progression and general well-being. Hence, it has been proposed that nutritional screening tools or scores (NSTs) should be used to promptly identify children needing further dietetic review and input. Although there are a few NSTs for generic use in sick children at hospital admission, NSTs or scores to use for children with IBD are currently missing. In this study, we would like to test the performance of an existing tool that is routinely used for all sick children at hospital admission (The Paediatric Yorkhill Malnutrition Score or PYMS)(5) and test whether PYMS can detect children with IBD who are at risk of malnutrition. If PYMS doesn't work well, we will develop a specific tool for children with IBD (The Paediatric IBD Nutrition Score or PIBD-NUTS).