Contribution Of Night Eating Syndrome To The Evolution Of Anorexia Nervosa – Case Report

Abstract

Introduction

Night Eating Syndrome (NES) was described in 1955 in a subset of patients resistant to weight loss. It is characterized by morning anorexia, evening hyperfagia and sleep disturbances. It is also more prevalent among patients with another eating disorder (ED), particularly binge-eating disorder (BED) or bulimia nervosa (BN).

Objective

Review of the literature about the relationship between NES and another EDs and to present a case report of a patient with a long-standing purgative anorexia nervosa (AN-BP) and comorbid NES.

Methods

review of the literature using the database Medline through Pubmed, with the keywords: “night eating syndrome” and “eating disorder”.

Results

NES is highly prevalent among patients with EDs, with an estimated prevalence of about 5–44%. However, most of the existent literature explores the relationship between NES and BED or BN, and it is not consensual if NES is a subtype of another ED. There is still scarce evidence about NES and AN comorbidity.

Conclusion

In this case report, we present a patient with a history of AN-BP, in which the recovery of lost weight and the increase of body mass index (BMI) occurred simultaneously with a period of worsening NES symptoms, which leads the authors to question if the psychopathology of NES has contributed to the recovery of BMI at the expense of maintaining a dysfunctional eating pattern.

Disclosure of interest

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.