"We think it may be a general sign, if it's confirmed in other studies. It should be taken as a warning sign that something may be wrong with this person," said Dr. Francois Herrmann, one of the doctors involved in the study.   The team from Geneva University Hospital followed the cases of 132 frail, elderly people in that city. The average age of the group was 81 years old. Some lived alone, others did not.

      The process began with an inventory of everything in each subject's fridge. Each person's case was then followed for three months to see if the subject required hospitalization during that time.   The team had expected to find that people with rotten food - or food past its best-before date - in their fridges were more likely to be hospitalized. But that didn't prove to be true.

      However, they did find that those who had a virtually empty fridge were at much higher risk of requiring hospital care in the near term than those whose fridges were adequately stocked. The risk seemed to be the same whether the person with the empty fridge lived alone or in shared accommodation.   "Those with empty fridges were three times more likely to be hospitalized within the four weeks following the fridge evaluation," Herrmann said from Geneva.

      Hospitalization was required for a wide variety of reasons, and was not necessarily food related. "Every possible cause. It was not especially linked to nutrition or malnutrition," he said.   The team, directed by lead author Dr. Charles-Henri Rapin, concluded an empty fridge may be an important clue in the elderly that something is seriously amiss.

      "An empty refrigerator should trigger careful attention by all care givers towards the actual health status of its owner," Rapin wrote.   "Either the person does not have a good social network to care for them and to make sure that the fridge is full, or . . . the person may not be fit enough to ask for somebody to help feed her or the person may be not hungry," Herrmann explained.