Partial eating disorders

OB/GYN News, Nov 15, 2001 by Sally Koch Kubetin

"Partial syndrome" eating disorders, which are considerably more common than the corresponding full-blown conditions, are associated with a substantial degree of psychopathology and deserve clinical attention, Dr. Palmiero Monteleone said at the Seventh World Congress of Biological Psychiatry.

Dr. Monteleone of the University of Naples (Italy) said that he screened a total of 356 girls whose mean age was 17. At that time, 10 had full-scale eating disorders: 2 had anorexia nervosa, 6 had bulimia nervosa, and 2 had binge eating disorder.

Partial syndrome eating disorders were defined as meeting all DSM-IV diagnostic criteria. Exceptions were made for the degree of weight loss and the presence of amenorrhea in anorexia nervosa and for the frequency or duration of binge eating in bulimia nervosa.

Fifty-two girls fell into the partial syndrome category: 31 with anorexia nervosa, 18 with bulimia nervosa, and 3 with binge eating disorder. "When 238 of the girls were retested 4 years later, however, there were no new cases of full-blown eating disorders, and only 6 of the girls still had partial syndrome diagnoses: 5 for bulimia nervosa and 1 for anorexia nervosa," he said.