German Clinical Trials Register

Acronym/abbreviation of the study

MeDiCo- health Study

URL of the study

https://medico-health.de/medico

Brief summary in lay language

Healthy eating has many facets and external factors, such as the current pandemic, influence eating behaviour. In the "enable cluster" we were able to collect comprehensive data on the nutritional status and eating behavior before the pandemic. This now gives us the opportunity to re-evaluate these enable cohorts with the same tools to assess the change before and during the pandemic. Besides possibly changing nutritional patterns, we want to focus on the micronutrient status. An important property of micronutrients, such as selenium, vitamin D or zinc, is their role in the immune system. A number of studies have already established a connection between certain micronutrient deficiencies and the risk of bacterial and viral infections. For this reason, SARS-CoV-2-positive patients (symptomatic and asymptomatic) are now to be recruited in this study to examine symptomatic and asymptomatic patients for differences in dietary behaviour and their micronutrient status (selenium, vitamin D and zinc). Nutritional behavior will be determined by means of validated online questionnaires and the micronutrient status will be tested by means of a finger blood sample.

Brief summary in scientific language

Unhealthy eating habits in modern societies are potentially modulating factors for a variety of diseases. At all stages of life, nutrition is subject to changes and influences the state of health. Therefore, strategies are needed that provide tailor-made approaches for specific nutritional requirements. Finally, the BMBF initiative "Action Plan for Prevention and Nutrition Research" founded, among other things, the interdisciplinary enable cluster. One of the main features of the project was the recruitment of different cohorts to develop new concepts for nutrition-related problems. For this reason, we intensively characterized these cohorts according to their nutritional behavior. Meanwhile, it is assumed that the current Covid-19 pandemic has significantly influenced their nutritional behavior. We would therefore like to invite former participants of the enable study to re-invite them to fill in questionnaires as they were used at that time. If this follow-up study reveals differences in nutritional behavior compared to the current pandemic situation, we would like to focus on micronutrient deficiencies, as it has been shown that these micronutrients may be essential for many physiological processes in the human body. Among others, they play an important role in the immune system, especially in the immune defense. With regard to Covid-19, the observation that older patients or diabetics with a vitamin D deficiency are particularly susceptible to severe disease seems interesting. Since the recording of the micronutrient status in SARS-CoV-2 infections is incomplete so far, we want to record the nutritional behavior of Covid-19 patients together with blood profiles of the micronutrients. In view of the current pandemic, this study aims to explore potential associations between dietary habits, micronutrient deficiencies (selenium, vitamin D, and zinc), and disease progression in Covid-19 patients, whether symptomatic or asymptomatic.