Correlates of health related quality of life in anorexia nervosa

Abstract

Findings of the present study suggest that BMI and comorbidity might be more relevant to HRQoL impairments in AN than age, diagnostic subtype, duration of the ED or current psychopathology. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (Int J Eat Disord 2016; 49:630-634).

Less symptomatic, but equally impaired: Clinical impairment in restricting versus binge-eating/purging subtype of anorexia nervosa

“…An extremely low body weight due to malnutrition and starvation propels a cascade of medical sequelae which can have detrimental and lasting effects on health and functioning (Mehler & Brown, 2015). Research utilizing generic measures or health-related quality of life have shown a larger role for BMI in predicting impairment as related to physiological aspects of illness (e.g., pain, mobility) (Weigel et al, 2016), than studies such as ours which investigated self-reported impairment perceived as secondary to ED. The current investigation lends greater insight into the intense drive for thinness observed clinically in AN, as well as the persistent lack of recognition of the seriousness of low BMI despite the associated medical implications.…”

“…As a secondary aim, we investigated the unique associations between ED-related impairment and core cognitive and behavioral features of ED, including severity of BMI. This is an understudied issue, as prior investigations of the unique contributions of individual eating disorder features to EDrelated impairment have either utilized community samples (Hovrud & De Young, 2015;Jenkins, Rienecke, Conley, Meyer, & Blissett, 2015) or mixed diagnostic samples (Dahlgren et al, 2017), or have more broadly investigated correlates of health-related QOL rather than illness-specific impairment (Abbate-Daga et al, 2014;Weigel, Konig, Gumz, Lowe, & Brettschneider, 2016).…”

Outcome of childhood anorexia nervosa—The results of a five‐ to ten‐year follow‐up study

“…Moreover, adult as well as adolescent patients with AN report a reduced health‐related quality of life (HRQoL), especially in mental health domains (Jenkins et al, ). Lower BMI, higher levels of depression, and higher levels of somatic complaints and organic comorbidities seem to be related to a lower HRQoL (Martín, Padierna, Loroño, Muñoz, & Quintana, ; Weigel, König, Gumz, Löwe, & Brettschneider, ).…”

Severity of somatic symptoms in outpatients with anorexia and bulimia nervosa

“…Research outside the eating disorder field underlines the negative consequences of a high somatic symptom severity on health care use (Gierk et al, ), impairments in quality of life (Kocalevent, Hinz, & Brähler, ; Kohlmann, Gierk, Hummelgen, Blankenberg, & Löwe, ), functional impairments like days of sick leave (Hoedeman, Blankenstein, Krol, Koopmans, & Groothoff, ), and the outcome of psychological treatments (Uher et al, ). In the field of anorexia nervosa, somatic symptom severity significantly predicted impairments in quality of life (Weigel, König, Gumz, Löwe, & Brettschneider, ). Further research to clarify the consequences of somatic symptom severity on psychological and functional impairments in both anorexia and bulimia nervosa is crucial to decrease subjective burden of eating disorders and to improve the clinical management of eating disorders (e.g., McClelland et al, ).…”