Precursors of Binge Eating Disorder in a Clinical Sample of Adolescents With Obesity

BACKGROUND: Binge eating disorder (BED) is the worldwide most-prevalent eating disorder. It is associated with psychiatric comorbidities and obesity, a high impact in life functioning, and high morbidity and mortality. First symptoms appear frequently in youths, who most commonly present incomplete (subthreshold) criteria for BED (precursor forms, PREC-BED). While some subjects will evolve from PREC-BED to BED, there is no gold standard to identify the clinical evolution. Information from prior studies suggest early alterations in reward and inhibitory brain circuits in PREC-BED may predict increased vulnerability or resilience to develop BED. Tools based on MRI brain connectivity analyses (MRI-BC), built on robust and interpretable connectivity whole-brain models, have proven successful in diagnostic classification and predicting certain clinical outcomes. OBJECTIVES: To study MRI-BC diagnostic markers of PREC-BED and to explore prognosis at 1 year of follow-up in a sample of adolescents with obesity (12-17 years old). METHODS: A) Transversal analytical design: 3-group (n=34 per group) comparison of neuroimaging (MRI-BC), neurocognitive and clinical markers in adolescents with obesity and i) BED, ii) PREC-BED, iii) no BED nor PREC-BED (Healthy group, HC). B) Longitudinal analytical design, pilot, exploratory: adolescents with PREC-BED will be evaluated in clinical and neurocognitive variables at 1 year. Baseline brain neuroimaging variables (alone and in combination with clinical and neurocognitive variables) will be analyzed as predictors of clinical prognosis, including conversion to BED.