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Elevated salivary uric acid levels among adolescents with eating disorders

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Eating and Weight Disorders - Studies on Anorexia, Bulimia and Obesity Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Objective

Uric acid (UA) is increasingly recognized as having important physiological roles and associated with several peripheral and central pathophysiological outcomes, and might play a role in eating disorders (ED) pathogenesis. We investigated whether UA levels are altered among adolescents with ED.

Methods

Morning salivary UA concentrations were compared between adolescents referred to treatment at the Herman Dana Center receiving a DSM-V diagnosis of an ED and matched healthy controls.

Results

Salivary UA was significantly elevated among ED compared with control values (ED mean 3.9 ± 1.2 mg/dl, control mean 2.9 ± 1.9 mg/dl, t = − 3.13 df = 81, p = 0.003).

Discussion

Salivary UA is elevated among adolescents with ED. Further studies are required to replicate and extend this finding and evaluate its generalizability as a state or trait marker as regards ED subtypes, other body fluids (plasma and cerebrospinal fluid), and recovery or premorbid stages, as well as its putative mechanistic relevance to ED.

Level of Evidence

Level III, case-control analytic study.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by the Herman Dana Foundation.

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Author notes

  1. Ruth Giesser and Tanya Goltser-Dubner have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Herman-Dana Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, Hadassah - Hebrew University Medical Center, Jerusalem, Israel

    Ruth Giesser, Tanya Goltser-Dubner, Dalya Pevzner, Amit Shalev, Ranin Masarwa, Ayelet Meltzer, Nidal Qutna, Roi Ratson, Ela Kianski, Esti Galili-Weisstub & Ronen Segman

  2. Molecular Psychiatry Laboratory, Department of Psychiatry, Hadassah - Hebrew University Medical Center, Jerusalem, Israel

    Tanya Goltser-Dubner, Dalya Pevzner, Laura Canetti, Shikma Keller & Ronen Segman

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  1. Ruth Giesser
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Correspondence to Ronen Segman.

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All procedures involving human participants were approved by the Hadassah Medical Center Ethics Committee Review Board, and performed in accord with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained and forms signed by all individual participants included in the study, and their parents in the case of minors.

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Giesser, R., Goltser-Dubner, T., Pevzner, D. et al. Elevated salivary uric acid levels among adolescents with eating disorders. Eat Weight Disord 25, 1821–1825 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40519-019-00799-1

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