Introduction:

Body mass index (BMI) is inversely related to the exacerbation frequency in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). However, this relationship may vary depending on the context.

Objective:

To quantify the association of BMI with exacerbation frequency in patients from Santa Marta-Colombia.

Materials and methods:

A cross-sectional study of adults with COPD. We calculated the BMIs, and the exacerbation frequencies were estimated using the Global initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) classification.

Results:

292 patients aged between 49-95 years were included. From those, 180 (61.6%) were male, 153 (52.4%) were healthy, 21 (7.2%) showed malnutrition, and 118 (40.4%) were overweight/obese patients. The observed IMCs were between 12.8 and 40.2 (median=24.2; SD=4.5). Whereas 156 patients (53,4%) were classified as GOLD A or B (infrequent exacerbations), 136 of them (46.6%) were GOLD C of D (frequent exacerbations). 85,7% of the patients with malnutrition showed frequent exacerbations, compared to both patients with healthy weight (51,6%) and overweight/obese patients (33.1%) (OR=0.18; CI95% 0.05-0.66 for healthy weight and OR=0.08; CI95% 0.02-0.29 for overweight/obesity, both compared to patients with malnutrition).

Conclusions:

BMI is inversely correlated with exacerbation frequency in patients with COPD from Santa Marta-Colombia.

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