Lack of association between HLA antigens and bulimia

Abstract

Bulimia is an eating disorder characterized by binge eating that is associated with behavior intended to promote weight loss, such as selfinduced vomiting, laxative abuse, excessive exercise, and prolonged fasting. The lifetime prevalence of major affective disorders in bulimic patients is high (Hudson et al. 1987), and a relatively frequent occurrence of affective disorders in patients’ families has been described (Stem et al. 1984). Recently, a monozygotic twin pair with both bulimia and major depressive disorder has been reported (Brewerton et al. 1986), and a high concordance of bulimia in monozygotic twins and a low concordance in dizygotic twins has been observed (Fichter and Nogel 1988). Thus, family and twin studies suggest a genetic predisposition for affective disorders and bulimia, respectively. One method of demonstrating such a genetic factor is to show an association between a disease and the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) system (see review, Gershon et al. 1987). In patients with the classic eating disorder anorexia nervosa, a high frequency of the antigen HLA-B16 (B38 + B39) and the haplotype HLA-A26,B38 has been described by Biederman et al. (1984), however, their finding could not be reproduced by a more recent study (Kiss et al. 1988). To our knowledge, an association between HLA and bulimia has not been investigated to date.