Background Weighed dietary records are considered as the gold standard in nutrition assessment, but 24 h dietary recalls (24-h) and 3 days dietary record (3-d) are usually used. The 24-h is less laborious and cheaper but is necessary to have an experienced interviewer; while the 3-d are completed by the same participant/caregiver, it is more reliable but more expensive, time consuming is high, require previous training and have more dropouts. Our aim was to compare the two procedures to assess dietary intake in HD.

Objectives To validate a 24-h vs 3-d to assess dietary intake for patients with HD.

Methods Spanish multicenter, longitudinal study (EHDN). A 24-h was administered (with a one-month interval) and was compared against 3-d covering three no consecutives days. Macro and micronutrients and energy intake information were obtained using the software AyS, version 2.0.

Results 98 patients were included, 62% women, mean age 49 ± 14 years, medians TFC 9 (7 ± 12), motor UHDRS 32 (7 ± 45), cognitive UHDRS 161 (132 ± 203), and CAG 44 ± 6. When the macro and micronutrients of 24-h and 3-d procedures were compared items of means and median at 95% interval confidence similar values were obtanined for: energy, proteins, lipids, carbohydrates, SFA, PUFA, MFA, quality fat (PUFA/SFA, (PUFA+MFA)/SFA, MFA/SFA), cholesterol, fibre, water, vitamin: C, A, E, B1, B2, niacin, pantothenate, pyridoxine, biotin, folic acid, B12, D, and minerals: selenium, calcium, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, iron, zinc, iodine, copper, sodium, chlorine, and manganese. Bland-Altman plots revealed concordance between 24-h and 3-d.

Conclusions The 24-h is stable over a period of 1 month and is a reliable questionnaire to assess nutrition in HD patients. The 24-h can be used for nutrition epidemiological studies in HD and can potentially avoid dropouts. We recommend use this tool for dietary intake assessment in HD.

We gratefully acknowledge to European Huntington´s Disease Network for financial support to this work.