December 2nd, 2011  |  

Puberty is a time of emotional and physical development. It is also a time when many girls start exhibiting the first signs of eating problems. “Rates of bulimic symptoms increase significantly with advancing pubertal development and predict the development of BN later in adolescence,” said Kelly L. Klump, Ph.D. of the Department of Psychology at Michigan State University, and lead author of a recent study exploring bulimic trends in adolescent rats. “Early maturing girls are at increased risk for BN (bulimia nervosa) and binge eating both during and after puberty.” Most girls who develop food issues usually do so later in adolescence, but new research is suggesting that symptoms that are present prior to puberty and in early adolescence may predict the development of more severe food problems later on. Klump said, “The presence of increased pubertal risk for binge eating in animals would provide strong confirming evidence of biological influences, as animals do not experience key psychological risk factors (e.g., increased body dissatisfaction) during puberty.”

Klump chose the Boggiano rat model for her study on binge eating for several reasons. “This model identifies binge eating resistant (BER) and binge eating prone (BEP) female rats based on the consumption of intermittently presented, highly palatable food (PF; foods that are high in fat and sugar with little nutritional value; e.g., vanilla frosting) in adulthood,” said Klump. “In summary, the BER/BEP model represents many of the phenomenological and distributional qualities of binge eating in women.” After examining 66 rats from pre-puberty to adulthood, she found that the tendency to binge was first expressed in puberty. “Results revealed dramatic increases in the binge prone phenotype across puberty, such that there was little evidence of individual differences in binge proneness during pre-early puberty but significant differences during mid-late puberty and adulthood,” said Klump. Although the rat model does not consider how body image, social pressure and other psychological stressors impact binge eating, the results are still important. “These findings are significant in suggesting that increases in binge eating and eating disorders characterized by binge eating during and after puberty may be at least partially attributable to biological factors.” Klump added, “Indeed, the presence of these phenotypic effects in animals strongly suggests that factors other than psychological influences (e.g., increased body dissatisfaction) contribute to individual differences in binge eating risk in females during puberty.”

Reference:
Klump, Kelly L., Jessica L. Suisman, Kristen M. Culbert, Deborah A. Kashy, and Cheryl L. Sisk. “Binge Eating Proneness Emerges during Puberty in Female Rats: A Longitudinal Study.” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 120.4 (2011): 948-55. Print.

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