Measure of body composition by MOC DEXA, in children and teenagers with eating disorders

Introduction Feeding has various characteristics and parameters including preferences of certain foods and eating habits, meal profile, regulation of the sense of hunger and satiety. In nutrition disorders (DCA) we find a constant alteration in the relationship between food and the individual with tendencies to hyper nutrition or as opposed to hypo nutrition. This can lead to the medium and long term compromising physical health and / or social psychic relationships. Therefore eating disorders are of primary importance in both the psychic and nutritional spheres and must be addressed in a multidisciplinary manner. Aim The aim of the study was to retrospectively examine a group of patients with DCA in order to analyze and characterize patients regarding their body composition, evaluated by MOC-DEXA, anthropometric parameters and hematochemical parameters Materials and methods The study included 28 patients (26 females and 2 males) of mean age of 13.6 years. These patients were characterized by the evaluation of clinical records and the collection of informed consent. The following parameters were analyzed for each patient: date of birth, origin, age at diagnosis, anthropometric parameters (weight, height, BMI), amenorrhea, quantification of physical activity, dose of 25 (OH) vitamin D, moc total body, left femoral muscle moc, spine moc and therapeutic pathway. Data was processed using excell programs and statistical analysis was performed using SPSS 15.0 for windows. Results The sample examined shows that the starting age in about 50% of cases is between 13 and 14 years. The average height of patients was 156.1 cm, weight 43.8 kg and BMI of 17.8 kg / m2. Physical activity averaged 4.64 hours / week. Dosage of 25 (OH) vitamin D was 25.4 ng / ml, while the therapeutic route consisted in the integration of dietary-nutritional, psychotherapeutic and pharmacological treatments. MOC showed the following mean results: BMC (Bone Mineral Content): 1560.5 g (s.d. ± 340.4) Total mass: 41280.2 g (s.d. ± 10946.8) Lean Mass: 31073.5 g (s.d. ± 5465.8) Fat Mass: 10056.2 g (s.d. = 4157.8) Fat mass%: 23.5 (s.d. ± 7.6). A comparison was also made between the group of patients with amenorrhea (n ° 18) and the menstrual patient group (n ° 8). The statistical analysis provided the following results: • Amenorrhea and weight: Amenorrhea patients had lower weight (p = 0.021) In our study we found a cut-off of weight corresponding to 43 Kg below which patients had amenorrhea • Amenorrhea and BMI: Amenorrhea patients have lower BMI values: 16.6 versus 19.6 (p = 0.034) • Amenorrhea and fat mass: Amenorrhea patients had lower fat mass: 8.2 g versus 13.9 g (p = 0.008) • Amenorrhea and fat%: patients with amenorrhea showed fat less than menstruating patients: 20.6% versus 30.8% (p = 0.004) • Amenorrhea and total mass: patients with amenorrhea had lower total mass than menstruating patients: 37078.9 g versus 46826.2 (p = 0.023) Discussion and Conclusions The results of our study show that the severity of the disease correlates well with early onset: earlier is the age of onset , more severe is the impairment in weight and body composition resulting in a reduction in lean mass and of bone mineral density but not in Fat mass amount. Our study shows that there are no menstruating patients with a weight below 43 kg, regardless of age and height. The weight t of 43 kg seems to be a true indicator to discriminate if there is or not amenorrhea. Amenorrhea remains an unfavorable prognostic factor that correlates with the severity of the disease, in fact, patients with amenorrhea have impaired body composition worse than patients with menstruation, with reduced bone mineral density of total mass and lean mass. A further study with more patients is therefore necessary to confirm the data which, however, already well correlates with the clinical status of the patients.