Cross-sectional study that included all patients above 18 years old (207), consecutively admitted in the National Institute for Infectious Diseases "Prof. Dr. Matei Balş", Bucharest, during June 16 – July 16, 2014. Malnutrition risk was assessed by malnutrition universal screening tool (MUST) in the first 24 hours of admission and associated factors were collected from the clinical observation file. We compared the patients with high malnutrition risk (MUST ≥2) with patients without risk or moderate risk (MUST 0 and 1), regarding demographical features (gender, age) and severity of clinical status (number of pills, length of stay, number of previous hospitalizations). The quantitative variables were analyzed as central tendency and dispersion, and qualitative variables were analyzed as proportions. For comparison, we used the T-student test, Mann Whitney U test and Chi2 test, as applicable.