Brain changes seen in former anorexics
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Young women who suffered from anorexia during their teen years have persistent changes in the structure of their brains, and deficits in cognition, if they haven’t fully recovered from the illness, according to Canadian investigators.
Dr. Debra K. Katzman at the University of Toronto, Ontario and her associates studied 66 young women, 21 years old on average, who had been treated for anorexia nervosa as adolescents. The group was compared with a “control” group of 42 healthy age-matched women.
For the former anorexia patients, the average interval from initial treatment to follow-up was 6.5 years. All subjects underwent a clinical examination, MRI brain scans, and cognitive evaluation.
Compared to the controls, women with a history of anorexia who remained at low weight had larger lateral ventricles, the cavities deep in the brain, and therefore smaller brain volume, the researchers report in the medical journal Pediatrics.
Participants whose menstrual periods were absent or irregular, a common effect of anorexia, showed significant deficits in a broad range of mental performance measures, Katzman and her colleagues found.
They take these findings as a good sign that damage caused by anorexia may not be permanent. As they put it, “The volumetric analysis of brain structure supports the reversibility of structural brain abnormalities after weight recovery.”
Similarly, since cognitive function was linked to menstrual status, they surmise that mental performance should improve with the return of normal periods.
Still, Dr. Katzman’s group says, a lot more research has to be done on adolescent-onset anorexia. “Clinical investigation addressing the role of estrogen in mediating cognitive function in anorexia nervosa also requires additional study.”
SOURCE: Pediatrics, August 2008.
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