Psychiatric comorbidity in women and men with eating disorders results from a large clinical database
Section snippets
Background
Psychiatric comorbidity is common in patients with eating disorders (ED), and previous studies have reported a prevalence of 20–95% (Blinder et al., 2006, Buhren et al., 2014, Grilo et al., 2013, Herzog et al., 1992, Hudson et al., 2007, Kaye et al., 2004, Milos et al., 2004, Spindler and Milos, 2004, Zaider et al., 2000). Differences in estimates are most likely due to methodological differences between studies concerning, e.g., ED population, choice of diagnostic methodology (interviews,
Methods
Data in this study came from the Stepwise quality control database, a large-scale Internet based data collection system for specialized ED care. Criteria for inclusion in the database are medical or self-referral to one of the 35 participating treatment units, a diagnosed ED according to DSM-IV(American Psychiatric Association, 1994) and an intention to treat the patient at the unit in question (Birgegard et al., 2010). The database includes data from patients of all ages and both genders. In
Results
ED diagnostic distribution and demographic characteristics are shown in Table 1.The sample consists of 97% women and 3% men. In both men and women the AN patients (both ANR and ANBP) are the youngest in the sample and the BED patients are the oldest. No statistically significant differences according to age and BMI were observed between male and female ED patients according to our a priori rule of statistical and clinical significance.
Discussion
The aim of this study was to describe psychiatric Axis I comorbidity in a large sample of male and female ED patients. The results confirm that psychiatric comorbidity is common in both men and women. Few diseases have a gender distribution that is as skewed as ED, which raises the question if findings based on female samples can be generalized to male patients (Karlberg et al., 2002) into different aspect of illness. This gender division is true also for our study, with 97% female and 3% male
Conclusion
This study confirms previous results showing that comorbidity is high among patients with ED, and especially so in BED and BN. In summary, both men and women with ED suffer from a substantial degree of psychiatric comorbidity but men and women seem to be similar in our study in this regard.
Acknowledgment
This study was supported in part by a grant from the Stockholm County Council (ALF- medelgrant number 20130224) and grants from the Karolinska Institute. The Stepwise database is financially supported by Stockholm County Council.
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