[ad_1]
Researchers from Uppsala University and Karolinska Institute demonstrate this in a study published in the journal Psychological Medicine.
“Our results underscore the importance of detecting and treating other mental disorders to improve the prognosis of young men with severe anorexia nerves,” says Jan Kask, a doctoral student in the Department of Neuroscience at Uppsala University.
the study It is based on detailed information on the more than 600 men, who at some point during the period 1973 to 2010 were admitted to a Swedish hospital due to anorexia nervosa.
– Because anorexia nervosa is much more common in women than in men, most studies on the mortality of this disease have been carried out in women. In fact, of the few studies examining this in our men, the largest was done in patients with anorexia so severe that they needed closed hospital care, says Jan Kask.
Most of the men had been hospitalized for anorexia nervosa since adolescence. During the time that researchers have been able to follow them since then, almost one in ten died, on average already at the age of 35.
– Although the direct cause of death was often different from self-harm, this means that the death rate among men with anorexia has been more than four times higher than among men of the same age overall, says Jan Kask.
For men who In addition to their anorexia nervosa, one or more mental disorders, for example, anxiety disorder or depression, had a higher mortality rate.
Most notable was the risk of premature death for men with anorexia who abused alcohol. In that group, mortality from natural causes of death, such as cardiovascular disease, was slightly more than eleven times greater and mortality from non-natural causes of death, such as suicide, was slightly more than 35 times greater than that of Swedish men generally of the same age.
– In fact, our in-depth analysis suggests that it is precisely in combination with other mental illnesses that anorexia in men is so dangerous. We saw a trend of increasing mortality even in those who did not have psychiatric comorbidity, but unlike studies of women with anorexia, it was not statistically reliable, says Jan Kask.
The researchers now plan to go ahead and also investigate how body disease in men with anorexia nervosa affects mortality.
[ad_2]
