Meditsiiniteadused

Towards automated screening for malnutrition

Struktuuriüksus:	Institute of Internal Medicine ja Tartu Ülikooli Kliinikum
Noortega tegelev uurimisrühma liige:	Alastair Forbes (alastair.forbes [ät] ut.ee)
Projekti teema lühikirjeldus:
Towards automated screening for malnutrition – the correlation between nutritional risk status and routine laboratory data. Malnutrition remains a common problem in the world’s hospitals, with over 30% of in-patients repeatedly found to be at high risk or already malnourished. Most of these patients are not identified and supported nutritionally, and they have worse prognoses as a result. Nutrition screening has therefore been developed and implemented in many countries. Even though the tools used are simple and quick, they inevitably divert attention from the acute problem that has brought the patient into the hospital. Probably for this reason, it has proved difficult to sustain the screening effort even where it is a mandatory requirement. Almost all in-patients have a range of blood tests performed. Individually, none of these tests provides nutritionally useful information, but we hypothesise that a weighted combination of commonly performed tests would be informative. This is the basis of the present study. A group of 300 adult in-patients in the Sisekliinik of Tartu Ülikooli Kliinikum will be studied. They will be subject to 2 standard nutrition screening tools which require height, weight, and brief data on the current dietary status, weight changes and current and chronic diagnoses (MUST and NRS-2002). Blood tests already performed during the admission will be accessed. A clinical judgement of nutritional status (subjective global assessment) will be made. Using logistic regression and factor analysis, potentially informative blood test parameters will be identified from a random selection of 100 patients. Bayesian weighting will then be used to create a scoring system based on the most informative parameters. The new score will then be evaluated on the remaining 200 patients. Successful development of this new score would allow it to be incorporated into laboratory software so that automatic nutrition screen warnings would be generated without any additional input from the clinical team. The benefits of screening could then be assured on a continuing basis at minimal effort. The successful student(s) will be able to participate fully in all aspects of the study and will have an opportunity to learn much about clinical nutrition from the expert team at Tartu University and Kliinikum.
Osalema oodatud:	The project would suit an enthusiastic individual who plans a career in medicine or any of the life sciences. There will be direct engagement with human subjects, but coaching will be provided for the student who does not yet have this experience. It will be essential for the student to be fluent in Estonian, and desirable that some Russian is spoken. Communication with the principal supervisior will be mainly in English. It would be possible for the Project to engage 2 students
Pakutavad ülesanded:	The successful student will learn about medical ethics and how to obtain informed consent. There will then be opportunities for personal interaction with patients from a range of hospital disciplines and with a wide spread of diferent diagnoses. The student will be responsible for checking height and body weight, and to ensure that the patient completes a simple questionnaire correctly. He or she will then be involved in checking the patients’ laboratory results before all the data are formally anonymised prior to analysis. A student who is interested in statistics will then be able to participate in this analysis and the subsequent development of the anticipated nutritional screening score. There are sure to be national and International presentatations, and at least one publication from the work. The student will be encouraged to play an active part in these activities, including authorship. There will be additional opportunities to partipate in the University of Tartu clinical nutritional teaching programme for the student for whom this is appropriate. The time commitment can be determined with the successful student, but the investigators hope that the interested student would wish to spend several hours a week working with the team on the Project.

Covid-19 haigestunute andmete korrastamine ja sisestamine andmebaasi. Covid-19 vereplasma analüüs.

Struktuuriüksus:	Bio- ja siirdemeditsiini instituut, molekulaarpatoloogia uurimisgrupp
Noortega tegelev uurimisrühma liige:	Pärt Peterson (part.peterson [ät] ut.ee)
Projekti teema lühikirjeldus:
Molekulaarpatoloogia töörühmas on kogutud Covid-19 haigete plasmaproove, verebiokeemia ja kliinilisi andmeid. Töö sisuks on andmete korrastamine, nende kandmine ühtsesse andmebaasi. Lisanduvad põletikumarkerite mõõtmised Covid-19 haigete vereplasmast.
Osalema oodatud:	1-2 tudengit