Personalised Nutritional Care for Older Adults With Pancreatic Cancer

The purpose of this study is to find out whether early, structured and personalised nutritional care provided by trained dietitians can improve health-related quality of life compared with usual nutritional care. The study will also examine whether personalised nutritional care can improve nutritional status, fluid balance, body weight, body composition, muscle strength, physical function, symptoms, psychological well-being, hospital contacts and treatment course.

The study has two parts: a feasibility part and a main randomised trial.

In the feasibility part, a small number of participants will receive the personalised nutritional care intervention for about one month. This part will test whether the study procedures are practical and acceptable for patients and staff. It will assess recruitment, consent procedures, completion of questionnaires and physical tests, dietitian workflow, nutritional assessments, optional app use, safety reporting and optional biological sample collection. Participants in the feasibility part will not be randomised and will not be included in the primary or secondary efficacy analyses of the main randomised trial. Their clinical data will be analysed descriptively to help optimise the study procedures before or during early implementation of the main trial.

The main part of the study is a randomised controlled trial. About 250 participants will be randomly assigned to one of two groups. One group will receive personalised nutritional care from a trained dietitian for 6 months. This may include assessment of nutritional and fluid needs, an individual nutrition plan, dietary counselling, symptom-adapted advice, oral nutritional supplements if needed, advice on fortified foods or snacks, and consideration of tube feeding or intravenous nutrition if clinically needed and agreed with the treating physician. The other group will receive usual nutritional care according to local clinical practice. Clinically needed nutritional care will not be withheld from any participant.

Participants will be followed for 12 months. Study assessments are planned at baseline, 3 months, 6 months and 12 months. These assessments may include questionnaires about quality of life, anxiety and depression, coping, loneliness and taste changes; measurements of weight and body composition; assessment of food intake and hydration; and simple physical function tests such as hand grip strength, gait speed and the Timed Up and Go test. Existing routine CT scans may also be used to assess body composition if suitable images are available. No extra CT scans will be performed for this purpose.

Use of a mobile health application is optional. The app may support registration of food intake, weight or communication with the study team, but it is not required for participation and is not part of the nutritional treatment itself.

Participants may also choose to give separate consent for optional blood and stool samples. These samples may be used for exploratory analyses of biomarkers, immune cells, circulating tumour DNA and gut microbiome. Participants can take part in the main study even if they do not wish to provide biological samples. Biological samples from feasibility participants may also be used for exploratory biomarker and microbiome analyses if separate consent is provided, but they will not be used to assess the clinical efficacy of the randomised nutritional intervention.

The main outcome of the study is the change in health-related quality of life from baseline to 3 months, measured using the EORTC QLQ-C30 questionnaire. The study will also assess nutritional, functional, psychosocial, healthcare-use and exploratory biological outcomes.