This study was conducted to find out if prenatal complications in development of the fetus factored into an increased risk of developing certain eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia. The study was driven by the lack of studies to date that investigated the role of birth complications in anorexia nervosa. The study also noted to their knowledge no previous study existed for this subject matter on bulimia nervosa.
The experimenters used all of the subjects from the same population; who were born around the same age range. (Padua, Italy January 17th,1971 to December 30th 1979). The experimenters used a blind analysis of the obstetric records from the three groups (Anorexia nervous, Bulimia, and normal subjects.) the sample of the test consisted of 114 subjects with anorexia nervosa; 73 with bulimia and 554 in the control group. Each group was recruited based on a face to face interview and diagnosis had to be met by the DSM-4 criteria. Other Information was also gathered on the subjects that included sociodemopgraphic and clinical variables, such as family history. The overall information was compiled together and separated individually by category of groups comparing the two eating disorder groups and the control group. This information was then broken down into sub categories characterized by social class; birth complications, birth weight, gestational age and obstetric complications.
The study concluded its results and found that people with obstetric complications during early development such as maternal anemia, diabetes, neonatal cardiac problems and hyporeactivity were significant indicators of predicting the development in anorexia nervosa. Meanwhile, an increase in total obstetric complications greatly factored into the age in which anorexia occurred. The obstetric complication that was primarily associated with bulimia was placental infarction, early eating difficulties and low birth weight at gestational age. Overall the link with...