ArticleJournal of clinical medicine2022
Body Mass Index Specifiers in Anorexia Nervosa: Anything below the "Extreme"?
Article in Journal of clinical medicine, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 22 citations in OpenAlex.
- Psilocybin in the treatment of eating disorders: a systematic review of the literature and registered clinical trials.Eating and weight disorders : EWD · 2025Pooled it
- The effects of waiting time for outpatient psychotherapeutic interventions on patient-reported outcomes in adolescents and adults with eating disorders: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Journal of eating disorders · 2026Review
- Observational
- Parental and Peer Relationships and Their Impact on Symptom Severity in Adolescent Patients With Anorexia Nervosa.European eating disorders review : the journal of the Eating Disorders Association · 2026Article
- Predicting anorexia nervosa treatment efficacy: an explainable machine learning approach.Journal of eating disorders · 2025Article
- Severity levels of anorexia nervosa and atypical anorexia nervosa in a Korean cohort.European eating disorders review : the journal of the Eating Disorders Association · 2025Article
- Data mining identifies meaningful severity specifiers for anorexia nervosa.Journal of psychopathology and clinical science · 2025Article
- Eating- and Weight-Related Disorders in the Armed Forces.Metabolites · 2024Review
- Corneal Refractive Surgery Considerations in Patients with Anorexia Nervosa.Clinical ophthalmology (Auckland, N.Z.) · 2024Review
- Analysis of symptom clusters amongst adults with anorexia nervosa: Key severity indicators.Psychiatry research · 2023Article
- Article
- What's New in Research during the Current Epidemic Wave of Eating Disorders?Journal of clinical medicine · 2023Article
- Association of anandamide and 2-arachidonoylglycerol concentrations with clinical features and body mass index in eating disorders and obesity.European psychiatry : the journal of the Association of European Psychiatrists · 2023Article
- Increased General, Eating, and Body-Related Psychopathology in Inpatients in a Specialized Eating Disorders Unit after the Beginning of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Retrospective Comparison with the Pre-Pandemic Period.Journal of clinical medicine · 2023Article
- Assessing cognitive flexibility in anorexia nervosa using eye tracking: A registered report.The International journal of eating disorders · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The validity of body mass index (BMI) specifiers for anorexia nervosa (AN) has been questioned, but their applicability to inpatients with extremely low BMIs and their prognostic validity are currently unknown. Therefore, we designed this study: (a) to test current BMI specifiers in severe inpatients; (b) to explore a "very extreme" specifier (VE-AN; BMI ≤ 13.5); and (c) to verify inpatients' hospitalization outcome according to BMI severity. We enrolled 168 inpatients with AN completing the following: Eating disorder Examination-Questionnaire, Eating Disorder Inventory-2, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, Beck Depression Inventory, Body Shape Questionnaire, and EQ-5D-VAS. According to the current BMI classification, those with a BMI < 15 versus those with non-extreme AN (NE-AN, BMI ≥ 15) differed on all measures but the quality of life with those with NE-AN reporting more impaired scores on all measures. Adopting an exploratory classification comparing VE-AN, extreme AN (E-AN, BMI = 13.6-14.99), and NE-AN, no differences emerged between VE-AN and E-AN, while those with NE-AN reported significantly more impaired scores on all variables while the quality of life again did not differ across groups. Hospitalization outcome improved for all groups, independently of BMI. Groups differed concerning the length of stay that mirrored BMI severity and impacted also hospitalization outcomes. Taken together, our data support the lack of validity of current BMI specifiers in AN, even in the acute setting. Moreover, the exploratory subgroup of patients with BMI ≤ 13.5 did not delineate a clinically different group.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.