Linked brain pathways could transform anorexia treatment, according to Monash University study
Scientists at Monash University have linked pathways in the brain to anorexia nervosa, in a discovery that could pave the way for future treatment of the disease. Here’s what they found.
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Scientists have linked pathways in the brain to anorexia nervosa, in a discovery that could pave the way for future treatment.
People who suffer from anorexia — who “voluntary restrict” their diet to the point of starvation — continue to punish themselves because of an extreme level of cognitive control.
This control, known as “reduced cognitive flexibility,” means their habits are so deeply ingrained that even with medical treatment they will revert back to anorexic tendencies.
But a new preclinical study by Monash University’s Biomedicine Discovery Institute has found that by suppressing specific activity within the brain, this could be stopped and healthy body weight maintained.
“What we did was to look at a particular neural pathway that we believe to be relevant to anorexia nervosa,” Dr Claire Foldi, who led the study, said.
“We looked at how activity in this pathway influenced weight loss in activity-based anorexia.
“And we used this technique whereby we silence specific neural pathways to really dive deep into understanding how specific brain function can control that weigh loss.”
The study, which was conducted in rats, mimicked the habits of an anorexia sufferer by allowing the animals to exercise on a wheel and have time-limited access to food.
In doing so, Dr Foldi and her team were able to monitor the brain and show that when specific pathways in the brain were “silenced” they triggered the onset of pathological weight loss.
Dr Foldi said this was the first direct evidence of a link between a neural pathway and pathological weight loss.
“The relevance is that we know that specific parts of the brain function differently in patients with anorexia,” she said.
“But we only know that after they’ve become sick.
“So it’s really unclear what aspects are causative and what are consequences.”
About 3 per cent of Australian teenage and adult women are affected by anorexia nervosa, which also has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disease.
But Dr Foldi said previous studies had found up 70 per cent of eating disorder cases could go undiagnosed.
She hopes that by showing there is neurological reason for anorexia — as well as a genetic predisposition — it will help break down stigma.
“Hopefully the more we learn about anorexia as a neurological disorder, the more we will improve the number of people who go to get treatments and relieve that sense of hopelessness,” Dr Foldi said.
She said the findings could one day help develop new non-invasive and targeted treatments for sufferers.
“It’s a long way from being able to say we have a new target for pharmaceutical interventions,” she said.
“But if we can pinpoint the specific pathways that are crucial to pathological weight loss then we can inform these new strategies and treatment to stop them, rather than going in blind.
“And that’s exciting.”
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