Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder, causing people to be obsessive about weight and what they eat, and is incurable. It has a mortality rate of 8 to 15 per cent, the highest of any psychiatric disease. The findings showed that apart from genetic risks, social stress like isolation and dieting as a result of peer pressure, which is specifically, the desire to be thin could trigger anorexia in adolescents.
“We think that for the first time, we have a mouse model of anorexia that closely resembles the conditions leading up to the disease in humans,” said lead researcher Lori Zeltser, associate professor at Columbia University Medical Centre (CUMC) in US.
Adolescent mice with the gene variant — associated with anorexia and anxiety in mice and humans —when exposed to both social isolation stress and caloric restriction, were much more likely to
avoid eating.