Author(s): Durão, Catarina ; Vaz, Carlos ; de Oliveira, Vasco Novaes ; Calhau, Conceição
Date: 2021
Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/124952
Origin: Repositório Institucional da UNL
Subject(s): bariatric surgery; BMI; COVID-19; Energy-dense foods; HADS scale; Surgery; Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism; Nutrition and Dietetics; SDG 3 - Good Health and Well-being
Funding Information: The authors gratefully acknowledge the participants enrolled in the current study for their kindness, generosity, and time in contributing with their personal information. We also acknowledge the support from the Obesity and Metabolic Surgery Unit of Hospital CUF Tejo, CUF Healthcare Group, and the support of the Lifestyle Medicine Unit of CUF Healthcare Group by NOVA Medical School. Publisher Copyright: © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.
Purpose: To estimate the association of emotional distress with both consumption of energy-dense micronutrient-poor foods (EDF) and body mass index (BMI) and the association between EDF consumption and change in BMI, during COVID-19 pandemic in patients with prior bariatric surgery. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study applied an online structured questionnaire to 75 postoperative bariatric patients during the first Portuguese lockdown. Emotional distress was assessed trough the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) and dietary intake was evaluated by Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ). Self-reported BMI prior to and at the end of confinement was used to compute BMI change. Pre-surgery BMI was computed from measured height and weight from clinical records. Results: After adjustment for education, sex, time since surgery, pre-surgery BMI, and exercise practice, moderate/severe scores in HADS were significantly positively associated with consumption of EDF (ẞ = 0.799; 95% CI: 0.051, 1.546), but not with BMI. Daily EDF consumption significantly increased the odds of maintaining/increasing BMI (OR = 3.34; 95% CI: 1.18, 9.45), instead of decreasing it (reference). Sweets consumption was the only subcategory of EDF significantly positively associated with the odds of a worse outcome in BMI change (OR = 4.01; 95% CI: 1.13, 14.22). Conclusions: Among postoperative bariatric patients, higher reported levels of emotional distress during confinement are associated with increased EDF consumption. Increased EDF consumption during confinement, particularly sweets, is associated with higher odds of bariatric patients not decreasing their BMI. Additional effort is needed to address inadequate lifestyle behaviors among these patients in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Graphical abstract: [Figure not available: see fulltext.]
