A preliminary population-based twin study of self-reported eating disorder

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Twin studies have concluded that there is a substantial genetic contribution to the aetiology of eating disorders. The aim of the present study was to estimate the genetic contribution to the aetiology of self-reported eating disorders in a sample of representative twins. METHOD: A population cohort of 34142 young Danish twins was screened for eating disorders by a mailed questionnaire. RESULTS: Concordance rates differed significantly across monozygotic and dizygotic twin pairs for broadly defined self-reported anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. Heritability estimates of 0.48, 0.52 and 0.61 respectively were estimated for narrow and broad definitions of self-reported anorexia nervosa and for self-reported bulimia nervosa. CONCLUSIONS: There is a genetic contribution to the aetiology of self-reported eating disorders in the general population. The relationship between self-reported and clinical eating disorder remains to be examined.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 137 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.