Mortality in AN is excessive and considerably higher than in BN, BED, and ED-NOS.

Mortality was high and symptomatic recovery protracted. Impulsivity, symptom severity, and chronicity were the important factors for predicting the 12-year outcome.

Many patients with very severe AN recover from their illness but AN also shows considerable long-term negative consequences. Over long time periods, survivors show improvement but better treatments for severe cases are still needed. Predictors of outcome included symptom severity, chronicity, and length of follow-up but not psychiatric comorbidity.

The presence of obsessive-compulsive features differentiates among individuals with restricting AN. Similarly, the combination of low weight and multiple methods of purging distinguishes among individuals with binge eating and purging behaviors. These results support some of the distinctions drawn within the DSM-IV-TR among eating disorder subtypes, while introducing new features to define phenotypes.

No abstract