"Archives of General Psychiatry."
,
Eating Disorders: perinatal
complications, a risk factor?
Some perinatal complications
increase the risk of anorexia and bulimia, say Italian researchers in the
journal
The eating disorders are usually
attributed to a combination of genetic and environmental factors, remember
Angela Favaro and colleagues at the University of Padua. A correlation between
complications during neural development of the fetus and anorexia or bulimia
has been reported and some studies have shown a link between obstetric
complications and anorexia.
The researchers studied obstetric
complications encountered at birth by 114 women with anorexia, 73 with bulimia
and a control group of 554 who have any of these problems, all born between
1971 and 1979 in the same Italian hospital.
Maternal anemia during pregnancy,
maternal diabetes mellitus, preeclampsia, placental necrosis, neonatal cardiac
problems, hypothermia shortly after birth, hypo-all these complications are
associated with an increased risk of becoming anorexic growing, report
scientists. About bulimia, it most commonly affects people, babies were
affected by neonatal hyporesponsiveness, early to absorb food difficulties, or
those who had a small size or low birth weight.
Moreover, large number of perinatal
complications accelerates the onset of anorexia. People who had suffered more
than five perinatal complications, on average, presented the first signs of
this disorder to 16 years and four months, against 18 and 10 months for those
who had no complications.
"These results appear to bear
some resemblance to what has been observed about schizophrenia and, with less
evidence about other severe psychiatric disorders," the authors note, and
called for further research on the exact nature of the relationship between a
particular perinatal complication and given psychiatric disorder.
Author: Mohammad
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