Girls with anorexia may tend to have traits that are usually found in people with autism, a new study suggests.
Researchers compared 66 teen girls who had anorexia with about 1,600 girls who did not have the eating disorder, using questionnaires they had previously developed to assess thinking and personality types in children with autism.
The girls with anorexia were found to have more interest in systems and order, and lower scores in empathy a profile more similar to people with autism than to typical adolescents, the researchers said.
The finding suggests the two conditions may share certain features, such as rigid attitudes and behaviors, a tendency to be very self-focused and a fascination with detail, the researchers said.
Traditionally, anorexia has been viewed purely as an eating disorder. This is quite reasonable, since the girls dangerously low weight and their risk of malnutrition or even death has to be the highest priority for treatment, said Simon Baron-Cohen, a professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge in England.
But his study suggests that underlying the surface behavior, the mind of a person with anorexia may share a lot with the mind of a person with autism, Baron-Cohen said. People with both conditions have a strong interest in organizational systems; girls with anorexia are intensely interested in the system that governs body weight, shape and food intake, he said.
Baron-Cohen previously proposed a theory suggesting that people with autism are more geared toward understanding systems, or systemizing, and are less capable of understanding peoples emotions, or empathizing, than other people are.
Other experts said that the link seen in the new study, along with many other ideas about autism, needs further study.
Theres some data that supports the systemizing-empathizing theory, but not all the data, said James McPartland, a professor of child psychiatry at Yale University, who was not involved in the study. In the field of autism research, we try to determine what account best explains autism, and this theory is one of them.
People with anorexia are given diagnoses based on their refusal to maintain a minimum body weight and their preoccupation with food and weight. Anorexia reflects a mix of social pressures, familial dynamics and genetic susceptibility, and is associated with above-average intelligence, according to the researchers.
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Is there an anorexia-autism connection?