OBJECTIVE

To analyze the premorbid features, clinical manifestations, dynamics and outcomes of ARFID in adolescent girls, as well as to clarify the relationship of ARFID with other eating disorders (EDs) and comorbid mental pathology.

MATERIAL AND METHODS

The study included 52 female adolescents, aged 10.2—16.7 years (mean age 13.1±1.9 years) who, at the time of admission, met the DSM-5 ARFID criteria. The average follow-up period was 5.6±1.6 years, the average age at the time of the last follow-up examination was 19.1±2.7 years.

RESULTS

Patients with ARFID accounted for 8.4% of the sample of female adolescents with EDs. The stability of the clinical manifestations of ARFID indicates the validity of considering ARFID as an independent diagnostic category. The clinical picture of ARFID is determined by specific symptom complexes amalgamated with constitutional features. The latter are manifested from early childhood by neuroticism, anxiety, a weakened and somewhat perverted food instinct, metabolic features, partly determining the low need for food, immaturity and weakness of autonomic regulation that may form a predisposition for the development of psychosomatic/somatopsychic disorders.

CONCLUSION

The study allows us to talk about a special predisposition, in the form of psychosomatic diathesis, which predisposes to ARFID and is a significant component of the response to psychogenic factors. It is assumed that diathesis as an abnormal constitution that determines the regulation of mental, autonomic and metabolic processes is a significant pathogenetic mechanism for other EDs. A certain commonality of the etiology and pathogenesis of ARFID and the entire group of EDs is confirmed by the high burden of family history of patients with various forms of EDs (13.5%) and a significant frequency of transformation of ARFID into other EDs.